City without Light
by NetRaptor
Summary: Elizabeth is an ex-Guardian, living in hiding in the Last City, running a tea shop and preparing for the next disaster to strike Earth. When the Red Legion attacks, she's prepared ... but not for Durn, injured Titan who she must protect once the Light fails. Everything about Durn reminds Elizabeth of the Vanguard-and the awful event that made her abandon it.
1. Chapter 1

"Guardian incoming," Elizabeth's ghost told her.

Elizabeth thought, "Thanks," and continued pouring a cup of tea for a customer as if this revelation hadn't rattled her. It was a busy afternoon in the little tea shop, and every table was taken by patrons. The shop was located in the Core District of the Last City, on a busy street through downtown. Lots of people were leaving work and picking up a snack before heading home.

Coffee was expensive in the Last City, grown only in one specially-designed hothouse. But tea, especially the herbal varieties, was easier to come by. Elizabeth had a deal with several hunters who regularly supplied her with the herbs and spices she mixed herself.

Her adopted daughter, Grace, worked at the register, transmatting glimmer payments to the shop's accounts, joking with customers, and bidding them welcome and good day. Elizabeth worked at the boilers, pouring tea and brewing more of the flavors that threatened to run low. Peppermint was popular today, for some reason.

But a Guardian was about to pay a visit, and that meant trouble. Elizabeth murmured to Grace, "Watch the register a moment." Grace nodded. Elizabeth hurried through the back room of the shop and out into the rear yard.

This was a shabby little area surrounded by a high wooden fence, concealing old crates, a rubbish bin, rusted boilers, and chairs with broken legs. A particular broken crate in the yard's corner served as a handle for a trapdoor.

This trapdoor was designed to look like part of the ground, just one more piece of junk. But below it was a set of steep stairs descending into darkness. Elizabeth galloped down them and let the trapdoor close behind her. Then she stood in the darkness on the steps, panting.

Her ghost materialized in a swirl of blue particles. She was a small ghost in a basic shell painted white with blue patterns, like a teacup. She ignited her headlight, illuminating the secret basement beneath the shop. Everywhere were cases of dried food, tanks of water, stacks of paper supplies, cedar chests full of clothing and blankets, and much else besides. The ghost glanced around to make sure everything was in its place.

Elizabeth followed the ghost's headlight-gaze. "All's quiet, Summer."

The ghost said, "The guardian just reached the front door. Looks like he's coming in."

"What discipline?"

"Titan."

Elizabeth stiffened imperceptibly.

Summer gave her an anxious look. "Not all Titans are violent, Liz."

Elizabeth pressed her lips together and shook her head.

Summer said nothing for a long moment. Then she announced, "He's leaving."

"Did his ghost notice you?"

"No. I kept my tag masked."

"That's my girl." Elizabeth patted Summer's shell. "Out of sight, now, unless another Guardian shows up."

The ghost switched off her light and obediently disappeared, phasing her particles into the pocket of Elizabeth's apron. Elizabeth pushed the trapdoor open with the superhuman strength native to the Traveler's Chosen, closed it softly behind her, and slipped back into the shop to continue working.

Grace glanced up as Elizabeth entered. Her skin was as dark as Elizabeth's was fair, her hair arranged in elaborate braids. She gave Elizabeth a concerned look.

Elizabeth nodded and shrugged._ I'm fine_.

"He was nice," Grace said in an undertone.

"Good," Elizabeth muttered. "Don't need their kind wrecking the place."

Elizabeth was on edge the rest of the afternoon. If one Guardian had found this place, he'd bring others. The immortal warriors were like ants, always congregating where you least wanted them. Could she serve guardians, herself? She'd avoided interacting with any of them for years, not since she had turned in her weapons and armor and left Tower North, almost a century ago, now.

_Don't be a coward_, she scolded herself._ You can't leave Grace to face them alone. She's not a Lightbearer. You are. Suck it up._

The afternoon wore into evening and business slowed as the dinner establishments opened. Elizabeth and Grace closed at seven and performed their evening ritual of locking up, stacking chairs, sweeping the floor, and washing dishes.

Then they climbed the stairs to the living quarters above the shop, divided into two apartments for the two women. Grace's room was filled with colorful paintings from local artists, all sunsets, flowers, and impressionistic people in bright clothes. Her bed was covered with a quilt in yellow and purple patterns.

Elizabeth's room, by contrast, was stark and colorless. The walls were white. The bedspread was white. The rug was a dull gray. Everything was clean and severely tidy. The only unusual object in the room was a tiny basket with a soft woolen blanket in it - Summer's nest.

The ghost materialized with an electronic trill of relief and flew around the room. "Free at last! Can we watch another episode of Love and Lead tonight?"

"Sure," Elizabeth said with a smile. Her ghost adored sappy TV shows. They usually put Elizabeth to sleep.

Grace poked her head in as Elizabeth unpinned her pale blond hair and brushed it. "We made enough today that I could order takeout. You want Mandarin?"

"Sounds good," Elizabeth said, brushing her long hair vigorously.

Grace leaned against the doorframe and watched her, and the ghost flying around the room. "Mom ... why are you scared of guardians when you're one, too?"

"I'm not scared," Elizabeth replied without looking at her. When Grace said nothing, Elizabeth added, "And I haven't been a Guardian in ninety-six years. Just a Lightbearer." She smiled at Grace. "I had to raise you, didn't I?"

"Mom, I'm thirty," Grace said. "Not ninety-six. It was a long time ago."

Elizabeth shrugged. "Doesn't seem that long to me."

Neither of them mentioned the event that had driven Elizabeth from the Vanguard, even though it hung in the room like an invisible elephant. Summer stopped circling and parked herself over her partner's left shoulder. "Why are we talking about this?" she chirped. "We have the whole evening ahead of us. Let's eat and watch TV."

"Since when do you eat?" Elizabeth said, bumping the side of her head into the ghost's shell.

Summer rotated the halves of her shell. "You know I meant you. Let's only talk about happy things."

"Yes, let's," Elizabeth agreed, glancing at Grace.

Grace rolled her eyes. "All right. Let me order the grub. We going out to eat or staying here?"

"Out," Elizabeth said. "I need fresh air."

As Grace worked, Elizabeth flopped on her bed and opened the new issue of Survival Monthly. "Oryx is dead, but the Darkness is not," the headline article said. "Ten easy steps to prepare for its return."

Elizabeth had only reached step three ("Do you have a bug-out plan?") when Grace called, "All ready. Let's go."

Grace had put on a bright orange dress that set off her dark skin. Elizabeth wore the same blouse and slacks she'd worn all day - changing clothes all the time was frivolous and made more laundry.

Grace glanced at the magazine. "Don't you already know all that?"

"Never hurts to remind myself of the basics," Elizabeth replied. "The basement still isn't as well stocked as I'd like. You never know when the next enemy will attack, or a new Faction War will kick off. Remember how bad it was when Osiris left."

"It wasn't a war," Grace replied. "Just a lot of disappointed people."

"Yes, well." Elizabeth motioned to her ghost, who disappeared. "Let's eat."

* * *

The Mandarin restaurant was only slightly larger than the tea shop. Tables and chairs were crammed into the tiny floor space and overflowed into the street outside. The air smelled of frying onions, ginger, and sweet and sour sauce. Elizabeth's stomach rumbled.

They secured the last free table outside on the sidewalk. It had three chairs, so she and Grace could expect to eat with another person. Elizabeth liked people and looked forward to a chat with someone interesting. Grace held the table while Elizabeth squeezed inside to pick up their meals, and returned bearing two steaming plates heaped with chicken teriyaki and yeast-based chow mein.

They sat and dug into their meals, not talking much, just watching the bustling crowd. People came and went, carrying food. Sparrows flew up and left again. Conventional vehicles swarmed the road in orderly chaos. Blue streetlights flickered on. Lights appeared in the windows of the skyscrapers around them. Far overhead, the Traveler caught the sun's rosy glow. In the back of her mind, Elizabeth sensed her ghost humming to herself, enjoying the venue.

A broad-shouldered, burly man inched sideways into the restaurant, apologizing to people as he bumped them aside. After a few minutes, he returned, carrying a vast plate heaped with meat and noodles. He stood a moment, looking helplessly around at the crowded tables. Then he spied the empty chair at their table. "Mind if I sit here?" he asked, giving them a pleading look.

Elizabeth pushed the chair out with her foot. "Go ahead."

The man sat down with evident relief. "Thanks. I'm Durn."

"I'm Elizabeth, and this is Grace," she said, smiling.

Durn dug into his meal, and the three ate in silence for a while. Elizabeth studied their visitor and his clothes, trying to guess his profession. He was tall and broad, the biceps bulging in his upper arms. But he wore a simple tunic, tucked into a second-hand pair of pants. A laborer, perhaps. His skin was an odd color, almost sickly gray, with faint streaks across his cheeks. Elizabeth puzzled over this until he looked up and his eyes glowed orange for a second in the low evening light. Ah, he was half-Awoken. The result of unions between humans and the paracausal Awoken, half-bloods had a hard time fitting in with either race. They weren't allowed into the Reef at all, by order of the Queen.

He covertly studied them, too, his eyes flashing orange as he looked up. After a while, he said, "What brings you ladies out on the town?"

Elizabeth smiled. "Dinner mostly. Have any plans for later?"

"I was thinking of trying the club scene," he replied, a grin breaking across his face. "I've been learning a couple of new dances I've been wanting to try on the club floor. Either of you want to come?"

"Maybe on the weekend," Elizabeth demurred. Grace had opened her mouth to eagerly accept, and closed it again, looking disappointed.

Durn looked disappointed, too. "I forgot that it's only Wednesday. My weekends are mixed up right now."

Elizabeth laced her fingers and leaned her chin on them. "Ooo, do you mind if I guess what you do?"

His grin returned, wide and white in his oddly-colored face. "Guess away."

"You're well-built," Elizabeth said, glad for an excuse to let her eyes roam his muscular shoulders and arms. "Your hands are callused. But your clothes are common, tough stuff, not too expensive. So ... you work outdoors."

His grin widened. "Right so far. So, it's my turn to guess. You lovely ladies are sophisticated and well-dressed. I'd say ... you work in that office building over there." He nodded up the street at the nearest skyscraper.

"Nope!" Grace crowed. "Not even close."

Durn studied them again, rubbing his chin.

"My turn," Elizabeth said. "You're a burly guy, but your speech shows you've had education. You're a contractor."

He laughed - a loud, booming laugh. "Your turn to be wrong!"

Elizabeth smiled, her mind already racing. He worked outdoors, but not building things.

"Oh," Grace said suddenly. "I know. But I won't tell." She winked at Durn.

He snapped his fingers and pointed at her. "Now I know where I've seen you! The tea shop!" He turned to Elizabeth. "You must be the manager. At a guess, your name is Elizabeth? Since it's Lizzy's Teas."

He was smarter than she'd given him credit for. Her cheeks warmed. "My, you figured that out fast."

"My job ensures I think on my feet," he said. "Any more guesses?"

"Engineer," Elizabeth said. When Durn shook his head, she added, "Pipe fitter? Construction? Automotive? The foundries?"

"Don't I wish," he said, the orange glow in his eyes dancing with fun. "All wrong."

"Then I give up," Elizabeth said.

"You sure?" Durn said. "All right, then. Here's a big, fat hint." He held out one hand, palm upward. A Ghost flashed into being in a swirl of particles.

_Guardian._

Elizabeth's heart lurched and began trying to pound its way out of her chest. Her whole body flashed hot, then icy cold. She couldn't speak, couldn't breathe, could only stare at that diamond-shaped eye fixed on her. She half-expected to feel hands close around her throat, feel her body slammed against a wall over and over, her ribs cracking. Incoherent bellowing in her face. Helpless, terrified, strangling and dying. And over his shoulder, that implacable diamond-shaped eye watched and did nothing.

Durn was saying something else, unaware of the sudden change that had come over Elizabeth. Grace was covering for her, leaning forward, talking with a smile.

Elizabeth didn't remember leaving the table. Suddenly she was running up the street, Light powers boosting her strength, fleeing at highway speeds. It didn't matter that Durn had been perfectly friendly, didn't matter that he hadn't threatened her. He was a Guardian. That was enough.

She jumped the fence behind the tea shop, wrenched open the trapdoor, and clattered down the stairs into darkness. She knew the layout by heart, and even unable to see, went straight to the farthest room and curled up in a chair there.

"Light?" Summer asked quietly.

"No," Elizabeth whispered.

She sat there in the dark, hugging her knees, hiding like a rabbit in its warren. Almost she felt like she had escaped being murdered again. Durn wasn't Sheltiel. But her mind blurred the line between the two. Guardian meant bad. Guardian meant run. Guardian meant a violent, rage-fueled death.

After a long time, her quick breathing and rapid heartbeat began to slow. Nobody but Grace knew about this bunker. The shielding tiles in the ceiling kept it insulated from all electronic signals, including ghost scans. A Guardian could stand directly above her and never detect her or her ghost. Safe. She was safe.

"Why didn't his ghost stop him?" she whispered.

Summer's voice replied softly in her mind. "He did try, love. We both did. But we're only ghosts. We can't stop a Guardian on a rampage. I've told you before ... I'm so sorry. I failed you that day."

Elizabeth held out a hand. Summer appeared above her palm, her shell angled around her eye in an expression of sadness.

"I wish it never happened," Elizabeth whispered. "Ninety-six years and it still hits me."

Summer gazed up at her sadly. "We've moved on. The Vanguard leaves us alone. I keep thinking you've healed, and then ... this happens."

"Why didn't you tell me that guy was a Guardian?"

"He's six-foot four and built like a house. I thought you were just flirting with him, pretending to guess his job. I didn't realize you honestly didn't know."

"Flirting with a Guardian? If I'd known, I'd have run a lot sooner."

Summer made a sound like a sigh.

After a while, the trapdoor creaked open. Grace called softly, "Mom?"

"Back here," Elizabeth called. She uncurled from the chair and flipped the switch above her head. Fairy lights flicked on along the walls, providing Grace just enough illumination to avoid bumping into objects.

Grace descended the stairs, closing the trapdoor. "I told Durn you had a stomach ache."

"Thanks," Elizabeth said with a shaky smile. "I couldn't stay there."

Grace hugged her. Elizabeth hugged her back, so thankful for at least one family member who understood.

"He left," Grace added, releasing her. "But he said he liked our tea and he'll be back. Just thought I'd warn you."

Elizabeth dug her fingers into her hair, holding back a groan. "I can't handle Guardians, Gracie."

"This one thought you liked him," Grace replied, giving her a flat look. "He wanted your communications numbers. I told him you didn't give those out."

Elizabeth groaned and sank down to sit on a crate. "I did like him, sort of. Before I found out he's an immortal trained in the art of fighting and killing."

"Mom," Grace said, leaning into her face. "So are you."

Elizabeth glared at her. "Not anymore. I'm only a Lightbearer. It's not my fault Summer found me. And no Guardian is going to - ever - do what Sheltiel did."

Grace sighed and sat on a crate opposite Elizabeth's. "I'll cover for you as long as I can. But you're going to have to send Durn off, yourself. He liked you."

Elizabeth sat there, gripping her knees, gathering her resolve. "I guess ... I'll just have to face him. I got myself into this. I can get myself out. And if he attacks me, use the shotgun under the counter."

Grace grinned. "Roger."


	2. Chapter 2: Invasion

"She wasn't sick," Durn's ghost told him as they walked toward the nearest rail station. "She was terrified. I detected elevated heart rate and a blood pressure spike."

"It must have been me," Durn said gloomily. "Guardian and all. Out in civilian clothes, trying to blend in. I guess I shouldn't have sprung it on her like that. She was cute."

"_Was_ being the proper term," his ghost replied. "You'll never see her again."

"I want to apologize, at least," Durn thought, ducking his head to avoid the lintel of the station door. "And her shop had good tea. It'll be a good excuse to go back."

He bought his ticket and took a seat on the waiting train. The car was reasonably full, but nobody gave him a glance, even when Durn's huge frame took up a second seat.

As the doors closed and the train began to move, his ghost said, "Message from Zavala."

Durn breathed a sigh. "As if this evening couldn't get any worse, Xavier. Play message."

The ghost's voice in his head changed to the low, intense voice of the Vanguard Commander, Zavala. "Durn Landsdown. Your conduct report has been reviewed and you are suspended from active duty. Effective immediately. Report to me tomorrow at oh-eight-hundred to discuss this."

The message ended. Durn slouched in the seats, arms crossed.

Xavier was silent a long moment. Then he said, very softly, "But ... we saved that other fireteam."

"By defying a direct order," Durn thought. He rubbed his eyes with a thumb and forefinger. He'd been stuck in the Tower for a week, awaiting this verdict. It was why he'd gone out into the City, just for something to do. So much for hitting any nightclubs.

"Those guardians you saved can offer testimony," Xavier suggested. "The SIVA would have gotten them if you hadn't arrived when you did."

"They did," Durn thought, sinking into deeper gloom. "I read their reports. Glowing. But I still defied a direct order, so it's still my neck in the noose."

He gazed out the windows at passing city lights. His ghost, phased and hiding in his shirt, did too. Xavier was beginning to seethe, his temper like a hot spot in Durn's mind.

"It's not fair," Xavier muttered. "My guardian's being punished for being a hero."

"Don't you say a word," Durn thought. "They'll probably sentence me to community service. I just hope they don't lock you up to ensure my good behavior."

Xavier's temper went from smoldering to volcanic eruption in a fraction of a second. "They'd better not! You're not a criminal! I will not submit to being imprisoned! You know what they do? They stick ghosts in a box on a shelf. A _box_. Like we're one more sack of flour."

"You'd be safe," Deen thought weakly.

"I'd be _bored_!" Xavier howled. "There's nothing worse!" He hesitated, then his voice dropped to a whisper. "And I'd miss you."

Durn smiled a little. "Don't go getting soft on me, little light."

"Never," Xavier said. "Ohhh, I am so angry right now. If I had a mouth, I'd spit. I'll have to settle for telling off Zavala."

"You'll get us in worse trouble," Durn thought. "Please don't."

Xavier didn't reply, because the train pulled into the Tower North station. Durn got up and stepped off the train, along with a crowd of other people. He headed for the lift that would carry him up seventy stories to the top of the City's wall and the Tower that loomed above it. Once, there had been enough Guardians to man all six towers. Now, only one was occupied. Durn remembered those heady days, when they had been building the Last City in the Traveler's shadow, seeking out the Ahamkara to make wishes, and accomplishing supernatural feats to raise the walls.

And here he was, facing punishment for insubordination. The Vanguard had slowly grown hidebound, enslaved to rules and regulations. Sure, he had taken a risk, turning back into the plaguelands. But he hadn't been infested by the killer nanites, and neither had the team he had rescued.

But that was how things were, now. So he sighed and went to meet his fate.

* * *

Elizabeth kept an eye out for guardians the next day. The morning rush seemed ordinary enough, though - just people picking up drinks on their way to work. She didn't relax until noon, when there was always a lull. She let Grace have her lunch break, and watched the counter alone. Since there were no customers at the moment, she worked on a new flavor of tea. Chicory root, a dash of synthetic cinnamon, a little black pepper for kick ... it was the start of an interesting flavor, but it wasn't right yet.

The weather clouded over, and it had grown rather dark in the tea shop. Elizabeth turned on the fairy lights she'd strung along the walls. As in the bunker, they lent light and a hint of enchantment to the room.

She was grinding spices with a mortar and pestle when the door opened. Her heart sank. Here was Durn again, still in civilian clothes, his huge frame seeming to fill the shop. He advanced to the counter with a smile. "Hello, Elizabeth."

His very presence made her want to shrink away and run. But using her name, too? As if they were friends? A little glorious anger superseded her fear.

"What can I get you?" she snapped.

"One spearmint with vanilla creamer," Durn said. "And I'd like to apologize for frightening you last night."

Elizabeth didn't answer him, only set about making his drink. He was just so huge! She was only five foot five inches, and he was almost a head and a half taller than her. He could break her in two, if he wanted.

When she didn't respond, he went on, "I try to blend in when I'm off duty. Makes people more comfortable. I shouldn't have just ... surprised you like that. I know some people don't like Guardians."

She flashed him a dark look, as if to say, _You got that right_. She passed him his cup. "Five glimmer bits."

He paid for his tea, but stood at the counter a moment longer. "Why don't you pour yourself a cup? There's nobody else here."

"I'm busy," she snapped.

He looked crestfallen for a moment. Then he took his tea and sat at a table by the shop window. He held out a hand and summoned his ghost, sipping tea as he did.

Elizabeth dithered. She didn't want to spend any time with a Guardian. But he was also a human being - or half, anyway. And sitting down with a cup sounded wonderful.

"Summer," she thought, "I'm going to risk it. If he attacks me, call for help."

"You have your Light," Summer said. "But I don't think he means you harm."

Elizabeth poured herself a cup of the experimental tea and joined Durn at his table.

He looked up with a quick smile. "Hello!"

"Hi," she said stiffly, sitting down. "Apology accepted, by the way."

He nodded and seemed to run out of things to say. He ran a finger over his ghost's shell. "This is Xavier. They're locking him up tomorrow."

This struck Elizabeth as strange and horrible. "Why? Guardians need their ghosts."

"I'm being court-martialed," Durn said, his voice quiet with sadness. "Effective tomorrow morning. One year of community service, with additional time pending."

Elizabeth watched his huge hand, which could have crushed the ghost in a fist, delicately stroking the angular shell.

"What'd you do?" she asked.

"Defied orders," Durn said.

His ghost turned to Elizabeth. "He saved a whole fireteam who were stranded in the plaguelands. That order wasn't_ fair._ They would have_ died._"

Elizabeth sipped her tea to avoid answering. Now that she looked at Durn - really studied his face, not merely watched him for signs of attack - she noticed his eyes were sunken, his face lined, as if he had passed a miserable, sleepless night. The orange glow in his eyes had faded to a light brown.

"A year," he whispered. "What will we do, Xavier?"

The ghost blinked at him, then shut his eye and burrowed against Durn's shirt. "I don't want to go," he said, his voice muffled.

Elizabeth could scarcely bear to see this. It was a shocking reminder of what life under the Vanguard had been like. She gazed out the window, instead. A light rain had begun to fall, dampening the pavement.

"So, yes," Durn said. "I probably won't get to stop by again. They'll probably assign me to working on the outskirts. Manual labor. You guessed right, last night. I just didn't know it yet."

Elizabeth returned her gaze to him. "What will they do to your ghost?"

"Praxic restraints," Durn replied. "Keeps them from moving or sending signals of any kind. Apparently they just shut the incapacitated ghost in a box and leave them there."

Elizabeth sensed Summer's shudder. Ghosts were social creatures, and the idea of a year of solitary confinement was worse than torture.

"I wish I could help." The words tumbled out before she could stop them. What was wrong with her? Offering to help a guardian? She was done with guardians.

"There's not much you can do," Durn said. "Citizens of the City don't have much sway with the Vanguard. Besides, I made the choice. I can face the consequences." But he stroked the ghost hiding against his shirt with wistful tenderness.

"Well," Elizabeth said, "why don't you two go have fun the rest of the day? Store it up, like."

Durn nodded silently.

They finished their tea. Durn bade Elizabeth farewell, and departed, shoulders hunched as if carrying a heavy burden. Elizabeth returned to work, deep in thought.

She'd abandoned the Vanguard years ago, and had never looked back. This glimpse into it made her happy she'd left. The poor man. Now that she knew slightly more of him - she still didn't know him, like his last name or how long he had served or his favorite book - he wasn't quite so frightening. And his poor ghost, shut up in a box, unable to move or talk. It made her want to pull out Summer and cuddle her.

But really, Durn's fate had little impact on Elizabeth. She'd never see him again after today. The sooner she put him out of her mind, the better.

* * *

The first wave of the storm passed over that afternoon, but the main strength was still approaching. As the usual evening crowd packed into the tea shop, rain sluiced down outside, flooding the gutters, pouring off roofs. Lightning flashed and thunder pealed.

Two women had brought in their children for a treat. The children stood at the window, drinking tea and watching the storm. The darkness of the storm meant that evening came early. Elizabeth and Grace worked hard, serving everyone, trying to keep enough tea brewed to stay ahead of demand.

When the air raid sirens started, Elizabeth thought they were part of the storm at first. The chatter in the shop fell silent. People whipped out tablets to check for alerts. Outside, the sirens wailed on and on.

"What's happening?" Elizabeth thought to her ghost.

"The City is under attack," Summer said, her voice trembling. "Cabal armada approaching from the north. I can't ... I can't pick up any broadcasts from the Tower. I think it's gone. Liz, this is the big one."

The big one. The world-ending disaster that Elizabeth had prepared for for decades.

She and Grace would be safe in the bunker. But these people - men, women, children - they needed safety, too. She'd stashed enough supplies to support fifty people for months, and there were thirty-six here now. They'd be the lucky ones.

"Attention, everyone!" she called, jumping up on the counter. "The Cabal are attacking the City. I have a bunker close by. Come with me, quickly."

People shouted about spouses and children. About half of them bolted out the door, instead, scattering into the City. The rest pressed toward Elizabeth.

"Open the door," she told Grace. Her daughter nodded and ran out the back of the shop, where she heaved the trapdoor open and turned on the bunker lights.

Elizabeth guided the people into the bunker, including the two mothers and the six children between them. "My husband," one said. "I can't reach him."

"Anyone else who comes to my shop, I'll bring in," Elizabeth assured her. "What's his name?"

The woman told her. Elizabeth nodded and had Summer page him.

Once everyone was safely in the bunker, Elizabeth shooed Grace inside, too. "I need you to keep them calm. Nobody goes outside, understand?"

Already the sky resounded with the noise of alien ships and the boom of bombs, although the city buildings blocked the carnage from sight.

"All right," Grace said, eyes wide and face gone colorless. "What will you do?"

"Bring in supplies from the shop and our rooms," Elizabeth told her. "Don't worry about me. I'm a Lightbearer."

She hugged Grace tightly for a second, then made sure she entered the bunker. Then Elizabeth charged back into the shop.

* * *

Durn had been hanging around a weapon shop, looking at the shotguns and wondering broodingly if he should buy one now or wait until he finished his sentence. The rain poured outside, and the shop was dry and quiet, without many customers.

Then the air raid sirens began. Durn lifted his head, his heart lurching. "Xavier! What's the alert?"

The ghost scanned frequencies. "Air assault! Cabal! They've hit the Tower, ghost frequencies are going nuts."

"The Tower?" Durn gasped. "What do you mean, they've hit the Tower? Is it damaged?"

"I don't know," Xavier replied, sounding as worried as Durn did. "I'll try to transmat in your armor." He pulled at the tags with his Light-powered transmat. To their relief, Durn's armor shimmered into existence in a pile in front of them.

Durn began strapping it on - good Vanguard gear, Vigil of Heroes, steel alloy reinforced with Kevlar. He'd had it repainted from its gaudy white and orange to a more combat-ready set of greens and browns. It would look silly on the City streets, but if the Guardians had to fight off an attack, nobody would care about fashion.

"Transmat in my shotgun," he ordered. "Deadpan Delivery. And my service revolver. And - better make it the grenade launcher. Wicked Sister."

The three weapons appeared on the floor, all of them hot to the touch and smelling of smoke. His room must be on fire. And if his room was on fire, four stories below Command ..

"Ammo?" he said, his throat thickening with dread.

"Loading all the synth I can carry," Xavier said. "Here's extra." He transmatted ammo for all three weapons.

Durn dressed and loaded weapons, fingers flying, adrenaline beginning to pump through him. Outside, the rain beat down, the sirens wailed, and the distant thunder of explosions and gunfire echoed.

"Hunting your team," Xavier said. "I've located Michael and Kari, but nobody else is responding. Evacuation orders are going out. Titans are to clear neighborhoods and get them to the evac shuttles. I'll mark your map. Blasted Cabal!"

"I'll give them a fight," Durn muttered, shouldering his weapons. "Let's go."

He charged out into the dark, rainy street. The fork-shaped Cabal ships filled the sky to the north, each one trailing a cloud of black smoke from the oils they used as fuel. People ran through the streets. Cars drove erratically, swerving and screeching on the wet pavement.

Durn wanted to fight those distant ships so badly. The Traveler overhead felt like a bastion of safety, its Light pouring down like the rain, energizing him. He ran and shouted, herding people onto busses and transports, giving directions to drivers. People saw him giving orders and calmed, some of the panic leaving their faces. Here was a Titan, Guardian of the City, friend to the people. He sent hundreds to the evac shuttles at the nearest airport.

Other Titans appeared, and they coordinated their efforts. Hunters and warlocks swung through neighborhoods, going door to door with evacuation orders and instructions. They escorted children and the elderly. Durn worked, the fire of the Light burning through him, always watching the approaching enemy. He would make them regret attacking the Last City. Humanity had the Traveler. The Cabal had the Darkness, but the Darkness would never triumph against the Light.

The foremost Cabal ship wasn't shaped like the rest. It unfolded in midair like an opening flower - or an uncurling set of talons. It soared straight at the Traveler, itself. Durn aimed his grenade launcher at it, but it was out of range, and he couldn't risk the grenade landing on civilians. A crazy air battle was being fought up there, Vanguard ships fighting the Cabal ships. An immense flagship followed the first wave, dwarfing the rest, shimmering with orange shields.

"Why doesn't someone stop that claw ship?" he muttered, shepherding a crowd of people onto a bus. "Don't let it near the Traveler!" His protective instincts screamed to shoot it, fight it. It was like watching a rattlesnake slithering toward a toddler. Stop it _stop it_ STOP IT.

The ship reached the Traveler and the claws grasped the white surface. Durn snarled at it, helpless to interfere. "Pilots, shoot that thing! Destroy it!"

Some Guardians tried, but all the Cabal fighters converged, defending the claw. The fighting became hottest almost directly overhead. Meanwhile, black cables snaked out of the ends of each claw, creeping across the Traveler's sphere, seeking to encircle it in six directions.

"What are they doing?" one of his companion guardians yelled over the radio.

"They're stealing the Traveler!" someone else cried.

The Guardians flew into a frenzy. Those on the front lines battled like maniacs, not caring how many times they died and resurrected. Those overseeing evacuations worked in barely-restrained panic, urging people to hurry, hurry.

The Core district emptied. Evac shuttles fled in multiple directions, away from Cabal fire. The other districts were emptying, too, testament to the quick thinking and coordination of Guardians and ghosts.

Cabal ground troops were landing in the northern districts and sweeping south. Their ships preceded them, bombing communication lines, airfields, and power centers. Most of the City's lights went dark. Only the Traveler shed light, now, its great white disk glowing softly, even as the cage slowly closed around it.

The Guardians rushed to the front lines, rabid for battle. For a while, they brought the Cabal advance to a standstill. Then the ships dropped more troops behind the Guardian line, and the Guardians found themselves caught between two armies. They fled west, fighting, dying, and resurrecting. But they bought more time for the last transports to escape.

Now the Guardians fought with heavy weapons, since civilians were clear. They toppled buildings to block streets, diverting the huge Cabal war tanks. They unloaded rockets and grenades into the enemy forces. They unleashed supercharged Light, creating construct weapons, bombs, and raw destructive force.

The Cabal forces again came to a standstill. Despite the physical strength of the huge aliens and the thickness of their armor, they couldn't compete with an enemy who died and resurrected over and over. The Guardians broke all the rules - they had unlimited ammo, they could fly, and throw bombs crafted out of nothing. And their backs were against the wall. The Last City was their home. If humanity lost it, there was nothing left.

Overhead, the cage crawled around the Traveler. The ends of each cable found its mate. The machine hummed to life, drawing Light from the Traveler and forcing it through the cables, creating an infinite feedback loop.

The Light empowering the Guardians and ghosts went out.


	3. Chapter 3: Lightless

Durn was swinging a huge hammer made of molten Light, beating back a Cabal Phalanx with an energy shield, when the Light went out. The hammer vanished from his hands. The supernatural strength left his muscles. He staggered, darkness filling his mind.

"Durn," Xavier cried, falling out of his hiding spot in phase. "The Light! What happened to the Light?" The little robot fell to the ground and bounced across the pavement.

The Phalanx lowered his shield and jeered at the Lightless Guardian. Behind him, a troop of legionnaires cheered, waving their weapons in the air. Across the City, the entire Red Legion cheered. Then they closed in for the slaughter.

Durn grabbed his ghost off the ground and ran. He couldn't stand and fight. He could barely lift his shotgun. His legs wobbled, barely able to carry him. Bullets struck his armor like sledgehammers, jarring his bones. He ducked around a corner and had temporary cover. But where could he go? He was north of the Core District, in the City's center. He'd have to hike for miles to reach the outer walls. He couldn't fight without Light.

"D-Durn," Xavier whispered to his mind. "I can't ... can't heal you. Or resurrect you. If you die ... that's the end." The ghost's voice was weak, faltering.

Durn's heart jolted sickeningly. "The Light's shut off ... will you die?"

He looked down at the ghost in his hand. The blue eye flickered up at him.

"Might ... make it," Xavier whispered. "But no Light for ... for you."

Durn clasped the ghost to his breastplate with one hand and drew his service revolver with the other. If he wanted to survive the rest of the night, he'd have to stop thinking like a Titan. No more charging into battle at the head of the army. He'd have to sneak through the shadows like a Hunter.

If only his body would obey him. He staggered and wavered like a drunk, tripping over debris, making noise. As the aliens behind him gave chase, he scrambled through the ruins of a bombed-out building and clawed his way through a broken wall. His limbs flailed. Where was his strength? He had muscles. Why didn't they work?

Durn came upon another Guardian, curled in a doorway, clutching his ghost in both bloodied hands. A fellow Titan, his breastplate punctured in multiple places.

"Can I help, Sheltiel?" Durn whispered hoarsely, leaning against the wall beside him.

The other Titan pulled off his helmet. His eyes were glassy with pain and blood loss. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. Slowly he shook his head.

His ghost gasped feebly, "Got to try ..." She flew out of his hands, opened her shell and tried to heal with a burst of Light. But the Light within her was barely a flicker. She whimpered and sank back into her Guardian's hands.

The injured Titan reached down and pulled the mark off his belt - the cape-like cloth all Titans carried to display their personal insignia. "Give it ... to the Vanguard," he rasped. "Don't let the Legion win."

Durn took his hand and clasped it. "I'll fight to the end, Shel. Somehow."

The Titan slumped sideways, the breath rattling in his lungs. "Take Sasha. Look after her." He handed Durn his ghost.

"No," she whimpered. "No, please ..."

But the Titan was dead, his tortured breathing gone silent, his eyes fixed on nothing.

Durn closed them. "May the Light receive your spark, brother," he whispered.

If only he could have saved him, somehow. But many, many Guardians would die this night. Durn couldn't save any of them.

He unbuckled one shoulder strap and swung his breastplate outward. It had a hollow in the center for extra protection of his sternum. He tucked both ghosts into this hollow, along with the mark. Then he pulled the strap back on.

He couldn't let himself be killed. He had a bereaved ghost to care for. He'd given his word.

* * *

Over the course of that endless night, Durn collected the ghosts of three more dead Guardians. His breastplate didn't have room for them all, so he tucked the rest into the ammo pouches on his belt. All five were silent, but he was aware of their grief. He shared it. He'd known these Guardians, worked with them for years, gone to parties and weddings with them. And now ... dead. Forever.

Was it forever? Would their ghosts be able to resurrect them if the Traveler could only be freed? He gazed at the hateful cords binding the Traveler. Already an energy shield was creeping outward along the cables, darkening the white surface like a bloodstain. If only he could get up there, hack through even one cable ...

As he crept and hid, Durn watched the movements of the Cabal ships. None of them went near the Traveler, although they patrolled ceaselessly around it. If he could somehow hijack one of those, he could use it to fly over the Traveler and drop down onto it from above.

But who was he kidding? He was staggering in exhaustion. Hunger and thirst like he'd never known shriveled his tongue and throat. Every corner offered some new danger to hide from, some new grief to witness.

He found himself walking by Lizzy's Tea Shop. The front window was shattered, but inside, tables and chairs still stood, as if waiting for customers. Deserted, now - this block had been evacuated early on. He might go inside and try lying low for a while.

As he turned toward the shop, movement on the roof caught his eye. A human figure ducked out of sight. A human! Or a Guardian? Should he offer help? How had they climbed to the roof?

As he stood there, scanning for fire escapes, the sound of claws clicking on pavement reached his ears. He turned, lifting his revolver.

A pack of Cabal war beasts had trotted onto the far end of the street. Giant reptiles with the long forelegs and powerful jaws of hyenas, they had been augmented with steel helmets. Pumps on their backs kept them supplied with drugs to make them attack anything that moved. The last thing a Lightless Guardian wanted to see was a pack of war beasts on his trail.

Durn's grenade launcher was empty. So was his shotgun. He had one more ammo pack for his revolver. "Xavier," he thought, "any more ammo in storage?"

"A little," his ghost whispered. "But I haven't the strength to transmat it. Maybe if you climb that building somehow ..."

The beasts spotted him and galloped toward the lone Guardian.

"Too late," Durn thought. He drew a bead on the foremost beast and shot it through the eye.

Then they were on him. The chaos of a desperate fight erupted, Durn grabbing beast after beast, holding his cannon to the thrashing head, and firing. Meanwhile, claws screeched across his armor. Heavy bodies knocked him about. Hot teeth sought the vulnerable places in his armor, like behind his knees and the small of his back.

The last beast snapped its jaws shut around the cannon and Durn's hand, too. The teeth crunched through the bones in his wrist. With a savage jerk, the beast tore his hand off. Pain blazed its way up his arm. He screamed. The beast flung the weapon away and leaped at him, tasting blood and ravenous for more. Durn caught it by the throat with his remaining hand and dashed it to the concrete. He held it there with one foot as he tried to draw his shotgun with the other. He could use it as a bludgeon - but there was so much blood, and the pain, and he couldn't hold the dog down -

A gunshot snapped from the roof of the tea shop. The beast yelped and died. Durn blinked toward the figure on the roof, but made out only a dim silhouette against the lighter gray of the sky.

"Durn," Xavier said, appearing in front of him. "Your belt. Wrap it around your wrist to stop the bleeding."

His senses growing hazy, Durn tore off his belt and cinched it around his wrist as tight as he could pull it.

He'd bled everywhere - all over the front of his armor, all over his revolver, all over the beasts and the ground. Other animals would smell it and come running. He wavered on his feet, dizziness creeping through his brain. The world seemed to spin to the right.

"This way, this way," Xavier said, the blue light of his eye bobbing in midair. "Into the tea shop. There's another Guardian there. Do you hear me, Durn? Come on, come on. That's good. Follow my voice."

Durn reached the steps of the shop before he collapsed. His ghost hovered over him. "Durn, my poor Guardian, please, get up. Don't let this injury defeat you. You've slain dragons, remember? Come on, please. I love you. You can get up. Your strength isn't gone. You can fight the shock. A little further, come on now."

Durn pushed the door open with a shoulder and crawled inside, holding his injured wrist off the floor. It was so dark. Glass crunched beneath his glove and knee pads. He couldn't lie down here. But his hand hurt so badly - no, his hand was gone -

Footsteps. A figure approached in the darkness. A light flicked on and swept across him.

"Oh, Traveler," sighed a woman's voice. "This looks bad. Come on, Titan. You can't die here."

"Not gonna die," he slurred, struggling to stand. To his surprise, he regained his feet somehow. The woman grasped his unharmed hand and led him slowly through the shop, out the back, and into a basement of some kind. Here were lights and people. Voices exclaimed over him. Durn's senses were swimming away by that point. The fairy lights on the walls made him think he was still in the tea shop. Many hands pulled off his armor and found the ghosts he had rescued, dented from his struggle with the war beasts, but still alive.

"Promised their guardians," he mumbled as the people around him laid him on a cot. "Promised to look after them."

"They're safe now," Elizabeth told him. Funny that Elizabeth was here. But she belonged with the tea shop. It made sense. Everything made sense. The horrible attack on the City wasn't really happening. He was still in the tea shop with a pretty girl, trying to convince her that he wasn't scary.

"Xavier," he whispered, holding up his hand. "Here, right here."

His ghost landed on his chest, the way he always slept at night. Durn closed his fingers around the ghost's shell and drifted into oblivion.

* * *

"He needs a blood transfusion," said Thomas, one of the men whom Elizabeth had rescued. "I'm a nurse, I can do it. Ghost, what's his blood type?"

The ghost wriggled out from under Durn's limp hand. "Type A," he replied. "And his wrist ... can you clean it and sew it shut? If I only had Light, I could restore his hand."

"I can sew him up," Elizabeth said. She went to the stack of medical crates, hauled one down, and opened it. Inside were not only first aid supplies, but enough tools and materials to perform surgery. Thomas's eyes bugged out a little, but he happily pulled on a set of rubber gloves. "Anybody here have type O?"

Two people did. The nurse set about drawing blood. Elizabeth tended Durn's wrist stump - washing it, spraying it with antibiotic, then pulling the skin together and stitching it shut. Durn's ghost watched anxiously.

"What's your name?" Elizabeth asked him.

"Xavier," he replied. "Thank you for helping him. So many Guardians have died tonight. I'm ... I'm so scared ..."

"Shh," Elizabeth said. "You're both safe, now. This is his only injury, right?"

Xavier played a scan up and down Durn's body. "His back and legs have lacerations, but they're not as serious as the wrist."

Elizabeth hadn't sewed a wound shut in years, and closing up a severed limb was tricky. When Thomas arrived to give Durn a blood transfusion, he watched and gave her advice.

Time passed. Twenty people of the thirty-six were still in the bunker - the rest had fled, searching for their families. Hopefully they had already evacuated. The two women and six children remained. One of their husbands had joined them in the bunker, and the other had been forced to evacuate. The four ghosts who had lost their Guardians flew to the top of a cabinet and huddled together, mourning in silence.

But everyone kept a curious eye on Elizabeth and Thomas as they worked over the injured Titan.

Elizabeth hadn't realized that the Titan was Durn until he'd spoken in the darkness of the tea shop. Part of her was shocked and horrified that his hand was gone, that the Guardian she'd been so afraid of now lay motionless on the cot, his grayish skin gone even more colorless.

Losing the Light had impacted her and Summer, too. Warmth and Light seemed to have left her very being, leaving only cold fear. Summer, too, had fallen out of phase and lacked the strength to disappear. So she sat on Elizabeth's shoulder like a parrot, contriving to hover along with Elizabeth's movements so she never fell off.

When the cage had closed around the Traveler, Elizabeth had staggered and caught herself against the bunker's wall. She had to catch Summer as the ghost appeared and fainted. Nobody but Grace had noticed. Grace had hurried to her side. "Mom? What's wrong?"

"Light," Elizabeth had gasped. "It's gone. What - happened?" Fearing that the Traveler had been blown up, or worse, abandoned Earth, she lifted the trapdoor and peered upward.

The sunset poured through a crack in the clouds, illuminating the Traveler in blood red. The claw ship and the encasing cables stood out against it like the web of a vicious spider. Overhead, Guardian ships plunged from the sky or drifted away from the City, abandoning defenses, their stunned pilots unable to keep up the fight. A roar of triumph rose from the alien invaders in the streets around her.

The enemy had achieved the impossible and captured the Traveler, sealing away the Light. Elizabeth closed the trapdoor and sat on the steps, hugging her ghost to her chest and trembling.

But after a while, the weakness subsided a little, and she felt more like herself. All the Guardians were mortal, now. She had lived like a mortal for almost a century, so she was better equipped to deal with it than most of them. They would need help.

She had retrieved her old Vanguard-issue scout rifle, climbed to the roof of the tea shop, and sniped any Cabal soldier who passed by. That was how she saw the lone Titan picking his way along the street, and how he was set upon by war beasts.

Now she sat in a chair beside Durn, stitching his wound closed little by little, as the nurse attached an IV and began the transfusion.

"You have a ghost," the nurse, Thomas, observed.

"Yes," Elizabeth answered, concentrating on a stitch.

"You a Guardian?"

"Lightbearer. Left the Vanguard."

"Oh."

A long silence, in which they worked over the injured man. The voices of the other adults and children murmured from the other room, where Elizabeth had showed them a chest full of board games and puzzles.

"The Light's gone, isn't it?" Thomas said.

"They took the Traveler," Elizabeth said. "In a big net thing. Do you think they'll drag it off?"

"It's possible."

Neither of them said anything else. The prospect was simply too horrible even to put into words.

More time passed. Thomas was unsatisfied with Durn's condition, so he added a quart of saline. Elizabeth finished sewing Durn's wrist shut and bandaged it. Then they left him to the watchful eye of his anxious ghost.

Elizabeth prowled through the bunker, checking batteries for the lights, water supplies, and the state of the sewer drain. So far, the local sewer lines remained unblocked, so she left the valve open. Waste disposal had been an important part of her plan while building the bunker. Nothing killed survivors faster than poor sanitation and disease.

Her little crowd of people were busy with the entertainments in the chest, but several adults clustered around her as she approached. Any news? Are we winning? Did the East District escape?

They had seen her ghost and assumed she was a Guardian, and therefore, she must have access to resources they didn't. She didn't have the heart to tell them that without the Light, she was no longer a demigod.

"I'll go outside and try to pick up radio chatter," she promised them. "Summer can still do that much."

Grace followed her up the stairs. "Mom ... don't die out there. I can't survive in this bunker forever. I'll lose my mind."

"For now," Elizabeth told her, "the plan is to lie low. I'm going to shelter anyone I can find, but the Cabal are pretty thorough in their butchery. I'm headed onto the roof again. Keep an eye on Durn. Have his ghost message Summer if there's any change."

Grace nodded, biting her lower lip. She was so frightened. They all were. But Elizabeth and Grace were nominally in charge, and couldn't afford to break down in front of the others.

Elizabeth picked her way through the shop and upstairs to the little door that led into the flat roof. She'd thought about setting up an additional dining area up here, but hadn't yet had the funds for the fencing and renovations. She lingered in the stairwell until she was certain that the nearest patrolling Cabal ship was half a mile away. Then she sat in the stairwell's semi-protection and pulled out Summer.

The ghost in her blue and white painted shell was pretty as ever. But her habitual verve was gone. Instead of bouncing in midair and twirling her shell, she stayed close to Elizabeth, her eye darting this way and that.

"Anything?" Elizabeth asked.

The ghost hovered in midair, perfectly still. She turned to face southeast, then north, then up at the sky, then around to the west. After a while, she reported, "Commander Zavala is giving orders for any surviving Guardians to regroup on Titan. The evac shuttles fled to waypoints all over Earth. Some are heading to Vanguard safe houses on the other planets." She hesitated, still listening. "Cabal radio chatter says they've taken the Traveler to ... to harvest the Light. They're hunting Lightless Guardians. Like us."

Elizabeth put her head in her hands. The enormity of the disaster welled up and swamped her like a tidal wave. The City was lost. The aliens had won. Could even her meticulous prepping match this? She had planned for six months, not an indefinite span of years, or even eternity. She'd also never counted on losing the Light. She'd always thought it more likely that the Traveler would abandon humanity once it awakened. She hadn't foreseen it being stolen.

Eventually, she'd have to sneak her group of people out of the City. Maybe steal a ship, get offworld. But for now, they'd sit tight. Avoid being detected. Let the aliens grow complacent in their victory.

Elizabeth sat on the roof for a long time, watching the enemy ships patrolling, hoping for some new clue on the radio bands as to what to do next, or how the Guardians could still salvage a win from this. Nothing new appeared. Summer detected no other ghosts nearby, although she did detect low-powered chatter across the City. "It's very sad," she said. "Ghosts who lost Guardians or who are separated and can't find them."

"Tell them to come here," Elizabeth said. "Send them our coordinates. If any have Guardians left, bring them."

Summer transmitted this message. "We'll see. I'm getting negative responses. Nobody's thinking clearly right now. They want to stay with their Guardians, thinking the Light will come back and they can resurrect them."

Clouds rolled in over the Traveler and poured more rain on the devastated city. It was long past midnight, and weariness dragged at Elizabeth's eyelids. So she retreated downstairs and slipped back into the bunker.

Grace and the other refugees had set up the cots. The front room had been partitioned off with blankets and ropes, forming little privacy screens for each person or family.

Grace and Elizabeth slept in one of the store rooms, their cots crammed against the walls and boxes. Grace fell asleep holding her mother's hand, worn out from stress. Elizabeth soon joined her, but left her ghost out to keep watch.


	4. Chapter 4: One-handed

Durn had strange dreams. When he wasn't seeing dark waves and people drowning, he was looking across a forested landscape to a strange crescent-shaped mountain.

"But the cables!" he cried in dream after dream. And he was standing atop the Traveler, hacking at a steel cable as thick as his waist. But shocks of pain ran up his legs, and the axe in his hands spiraled away into dust.

"Shh," Xavier's voice always spoke in his mind. "Rest, Guardian. I'm here. You're safe."

Durn opened his eyes long enough to remember he was in the bunker, then slipped back into dreams.

Finally it was hunger that awoke him. Voices murmured elsewhere in the bunker, and the smell of cooking food touched his nose. And hot tea. The tea shop.

He sat up, reached up to push down the blanket, and pain shot through his wrist. His hand was gone. He stared at the bandaged stump, his mind stumbling over this fact again and again. Almost he could feel his fingers flexing. But there was nothing there.

Xavier flew into his range of vision, his shell drooping and sad. "It's gone, Durn. For now. How do you feel?"

"Hungry," Durn replied, checking that he still wore pants, and looking around for his shirt. "The attack ... it really happened, then."

"Yes."

"Is this the tea shop?"

"Apparently there's a secret bunker below it. Elizabeth saved your life."

Durn wrestled his shirt on, grinning. "I knew there was more to that girl than met the eye."

Xavier watched him. "How can you be so cheerful? We've lost everything."

Durn sat on the edge of the bed a moment, staring at his missing hand. "It's better than brooding. Believe me. I'll do plenty. Later."

He carefully rose to his feet, took two steps, and was swamped by lightheadedness. He staggered and caught himself against the wall.

Xavier sent an alert to Summer, who passed it on to Elizabeth. Elizabeth rushed in and caught Durn's good arm. "You shouldn't be standing up! Sit back down."

"Hungry," he told her.

"I'll bring you some breakfast," she assured him. "Stay right here on the cot. Tea?"

Durn nodded, watching her. Elizabeth looked tired, with dark smudges beneath her eyes. Her hair had been swept back in a hasty ponytail, and her clothes looked as if she had slept in them. But the thing that astonished him the most was the ghost riding on her shoulder.

When she returned, carrying a tray with a lot of little cups and bowls on it, he asked, "You're a Guardian?"

Elizabeth shrugged. "Used to be. Here, set this across your knees. Be careful. After you eat, I'll fix up a sling for your arm."

She kept up a constant stream of talk, trying to distract him from the delicate-looking ghost on her shoulder. Finally, she left him alone to eat.

"What does she mean, she used to be a guardian?" Durn thought to his ghost.

Xavier shrugged his shell. "Her ghost won't say. Her name is Summer, but that's all I've been able to get out of her."

Durn shrugged it off. If she didn't want to talk about it, he wasn't going to pry.

Durn ate clumsily with his left hand, holding his right arm across his chest, not sure what else to do with it. It startled him to look down and see only a bandage where his hand had been. He'd learn to fight left-handed, that was all. Using a fork left-handed was a good start.

"At least I'm not doing community service," he remarked. "And you're not in a box."

Xavier gazed at him a long moment. At last he nodded. "That is the smallest of silver linings I can think of, but you're not wrong."

Durn kept up a string of little jokes, grinning at his ghost as he ate. It made the shock of suddenly being crippled easier to bear. Deep down, black horror lurked in the darkness where his Light used to be. His humor was a life raft floating him over the top of that darkness.

When Elizabeth came to fetch his tray, he said, "Could you give me a hand with this? I'm one short."

She hesitated and looked hard at him, unsure whether he was really kidding. When he added a grin, she smiled, hesitantly. "Um ... sure."

She cleared away his dishes and returned with a sling. As she helped him into it, he said, "Do you think Banshee would build a fusion cannon onto my arm in place of a prosthetic?"

"Might be awkward when you shower," Elizabeth replied.

Durn winked. "Showers would be a thing of the past."

"Good luck attracting the ladies, then."

"Ladies don't care how Titans smell. They only care about the size of their cannon."

Elizabeth arched an eyebrow higher than he realized eyebrows could reach. "Charming." She tightened the shoulder strap on the sling until his arm rested comfortably against his chest.

"That feels better," he said, looking down at it. "Now I won't crash the stump into things."

"Please don't, Stumpy," Elizabeth replied. "You've had a blood transfusion, but your blood pressure is still awfully low. You're to drink lots of liquids and rest."

"Right," Durn replied. "If I'm Stumpy, then you're Lizzy."

"Deal," Elizabeth replied, almost laughing. Light burn it, he wanted to make this girl smile. Something about the way she carried herself, the way she kept her shoulders angled away from him, the way she never let him between her and the door ...

"Just so you know," Durn said, "I won't attack you."

"Good," Elizabeth retorted, "because you couldn't fend off a mosquito right now."

"Hey," he said, "I can slap a mosquito with one hand."

"But I could take you down," she said. For a second, she was deadly serious, a certain blackness entering her eyes. Then she smiled and the blackness cleared away. "If you want to come out here, the kids have some board games going. And we've hooked up a radio to my solar battery."

"All right." He rose to his feet, taking it slow, wary of the dizziness that had assaulted him last time. But his head remained clear, so he made his way to the front room and sat in a folding chair that creaked under his weight.

The children were playing, two mothers and one father watching them. The other adults clustered around the radio, listening to the faint, staticky voices within.

"Transmissions coming in from high orbit," Xavier told him softly. "Rumors of a Guardian somewhere who regained their Light."

"Even one Guardian would be a blow to the enemy," Durn muttered. "I hope it's true."

The radio fizzed on, talking about observed Cabal movements on the other planets and moons. The City population had safely evacuated to secret locations, but these couldn't be identified on an open frequency. Durn was relieved. That was all that remained of the human race. Thank the Light they'd escaped.

"Excuse me, sir."

He looked up. One of the ghosts he had rescued floated at his elbow, gazing at him shyly. "I wanted to thank you," she went on, "for ... for being with my Guardian, there at the end. It meant a lot to him that I stay safe."

"I'm sorry I couldn't do more," he told her, gazing into the earnest little blue eye. "I swear to you, I'm going to make this right."

The ghost's eye dropped to his injured arm. Then she looked away, as if embarrassed. "Yes sir. That was all ... I don't really know what else to do."

"Me neither," Durn muttered. "Not yet."

The ghost returned to the top of the cabinet with the other orphaned ghosts. Xavier, floating beside him, inched closer until the tip of his shell brushed Durn's cheek.

"They've lost everything," he whispered in Durn's mind. "A guardian is a ghost's life. And I ... I've been so close to losing you." His voice trembled with unspoken emotion.

"Hush," Durn thought, stroking the cold little shell. "I'm still here, Xav. You've been the best ghost a Guardian could ask for."

He didn't mention that he had heard Xavier say_ I love you_ in the midst of his encouraging chatter after Durn had lost his hand. Xavier wouldn't want him to bring it up. But it warmed Durn's heart to know that his ghost loved him so much. He still had one friend left alive.

Elizabeth kept her distance. She moved in and out of the bunker, keeping watch, looking for other guardians or ghosts. But she returned each time shaking her head, lips pressed together grimly. The Cabal still crisscrossed the City, hunting survivors. Any Guardians able to move had fled. The City was inhabited only by ghosts, literally and figuratively.

Durn rested, ate, drank, and watched the others move about the bunker. The loss of Light weighed on him constantly. He actually felt colder, as if his body temperature had dropped a degree. Quiet misery plagued him - a dark sadness and despair he'd never felt before. Even watching the children leaping from cot to cot in a mad game of The Floor Is Lava couldn't improve his mood. Had he lost his soul along with his Light? Was all that remained the shape of it imprinted on his cells, the brain functions making him think he still lived, when really, he was already dead?

His arm ached. The wound was a constant presence in his senses, a dull gong of pain. The painkillers didn't seem to touch it - all he could do was ignore it, the way he'd trained to ignore pain in combat.

As the long, dreary day passed and night returned, Durn went to his cot. The pain and stress of waiting to be discovered by their enemies had tired him out. He submitted to the nurse changing his bandages, which hurt. But Thomas pronounced his stump infection-free and beginning to heal, which was encouraging.

As the voices in the bunker quieted, Durn thought about those four lonely ghosts, missing their Guardians, grieving alone.

"Xavier," he whispered, "tell the other ghosts they're welcome to sleep in here. Since I'm supposed to look after them."

Xavier did. After a while, the ghosts drifted in, one by one, all in different colors and models of shells, the last gifts their Guardians had given them.

Durn set a pillow beside him on the cot and patted it. The ghosts hesitantly landed on it, glancing warily at him and each other.

"I haven't talked to you, yet," he murmured to them. "Your Guardians asked me to take care of you. How do you want me to do that? Shall I help you find new Guardians?"

The ghosts flinched and blinked at each other.

"I'm not ready," one said.

"Me neither," another agreed. "I would have returned to the Traveler by now, but ... we can't."

"What do we do?" whispered the third. "Our Guardians are dead. The Traveler is sealed off. We lack the Light to heal or resurrect, either our original guardians or new ones."

"I don't want a new guardian," said one. "Not after Sam. There'll never be another Warlock like him." The ghost looked up at Xavier, who floated at his Guardian's shoulder. "You're lucky. I wish my guardian had only lost a hand. He took fifteen armor-piercing rounds to the chest."

The ghosts murmured condolences.

Listening to them, Durn's heart stirred with grief and pity. He wanted to help them, help everyone, save the City. But how? He was still weak from blood loss. His right hand was gone. His ghost couldn't heal or resurrect him.

He lay back in his cot and pictured the cables binding the Traveler.

* * *

Long after Durn and the other ghosts had fallen asleep, Xavier floated nearby, keeping watch.

Hearing his siblings ghosts speak of their lost Guardians had ignited a fire in his core. Durn may be hurt, but he was still a mighty Titan. And Xavier was the ghost of a Titan. He had to live up to Durn, show that he could suffer loss and still smile and joke. Even though his Light was a mere flicker, and alien, dark thoughts sometimes entered his mind, he had to be strong and brave.

Xavier mostly studied Durn's stump. Surely he could heal that. His bond with Durn gave him the blueprints to every cell in his Guardian's body. He could rebuild Durn from quanta an infinite number of times, as long as he had the Light. Surely he could heal one wound. Xavier's Light was diminished, not gone.

There in the darkness, he opened his shell, expanding into a sphere of soft Light the color of a spring sky at dawn. He pulsed his Light at Durn's arm, the way he always did while healing. But it was so dim and weak. His scans showed only one percent change.

Xavier looked closer. One percent was still greater than zero. The cells had replicated a little, the flesh slightly more mended. He couldn't regenerate the missing hand, but he could definitely heal the wound and remove the pain. His Guardian was suffering, and as a professional healer, this thought tormented Xavier.

He bathed Durn's wrist in dim Light over and over. He only had to do this ninety-nine more times. Ninety-eight. Ninety-seven.

Durn slept on, unaware of the flickers of Light from his ghost. The only person who saw was Elizabeth, sitting up on her cot in the next room, peering through the doorway. The first flash had awakened her, and now she sat, observing in silence, as Durn's ghost tried to heal him again and again.

Summer awakened and watched, too. "I would do that," she said into Elizabeth's mind. "If you were hurt. What Light I have, I'd share."

"Durn hasn't been what I expected," Elizabeth thought. "I mean, I expected the jokes and such. But he's so quiet. I've never known a quiet Titan."

"Yes," Summer agreed, "your fireteam was always super loud."

"I always liked Titans," Elizabeth thought. She didn't add the inevitable _but_. Summer knew what had happened. She had transmatted Elizabeth away from Sheltiel's attack, and Elizabeth had still died of it a few minutes afterward. When Summer resurrected her, Elizabeth had gone straight to Vanguard Command and resigned.

"Liz," Summer said, and stopped, uncertain how to go on.

"Spit it out, little spark."

Summer hesitated, spinning her shell left, then right. "Well ... you know the ghosts Durn rescued?"

"Yes."

"One of them was Sheltiel's."

The implications of this sank in. Elizabeth sat there in silence, her eyes fixed on the ghost and his Light in the next room. But she was picturing Sheltiel, his arrogant, angry face, dying in the rain.

Confused emotions tumbled through her like spilled marbles. First was relief. He'd walked free with only a reprimand for murdering a teammate. This death meant that justice had been done. Second came guilt at feeling relief. He had been a Guardian. The death of any Guardian was something to be mourned, not celebrated. His ghost was certainly sad. But she blamed his ghost, too, for allowing her guardian to behave so badly. Elizabeth couldn't muster much compassion for her.

She lay down and wrapped herself in a cocoon of blankets, not wanting to think about it any more. She had spent decades hiding from the Vanguard, fearful of Sheltiel finding her again. Now he was dead. And she was still afraid - and at the same time, viciously glad.

"I'm a terrible person," she thought to her ghost.

Summer didn't reply for a long moment. Then she whispered, "I am, too."


	5. Chapter 5: Secrets

Durn awakened the next morning to find Xavier crashed on his chest, his shell half-open, the segments piled untidily on either side of his core. Durn poked him. "Xavier?"

When the ghost didn't respond, Durn repeated, more urgently, "Xavier! Wake up!"

The ghost's four iris-like eyelids slowly uncurled, the blue eye beneath flickering and dim. "Durn," he said, and closed his eye again.

The Titan sat up and scooped up the ghost in his hand. The segments of his shell were still held in place by the ghost's Light field - mostly. They fell about and wouldn't hold their shape. "Xavier, what happened to you?"

"He healed you," said one of the orphan ghosts. All four of them were watching from their pillow.

Durn looked down at his stump. It didn't hurt anymore. He bumped it into the blanket, which had been massively painful the night before. Nothing. No pain, not even discomfort.

"He healed you one hundred times," the orphan ghost said. "He nearly quenched himself."

"One hundred times?" Durn muttered, looking down at his ghost, who had literally fallen to pieces. "You little idiot!"

Xavier was unconscious and didn't respond.

Durn gently nestled him on the pillow among the other ghosts. "Keep an eye on him for me," he told them. "I need the nurse to check me out. Don't let him die."

"What do you expect us to do?" one ghost snapped. "We have no Light."

"He didn't, either," Durn replied. He got up and went in search of Thomas. As soon as he stood, he felt his strength had returned. It wasn't the Light, but his ghost had restored his blood level. No more pain anywhere in his body.

Thomas unwrapped the bandages and peered closely at the stump with a flashlight. "Your ghost healed you, all right. The skin is completely closed and sealed." He prodded the stump here and there, testing the nerves. Durn didn't have a lot of feeling in it.

"Well," Thomas said, "assuming we eventually get out of here, we can fit you for a prosthetic. The lack of nerve endings isn't the greatest sign, but it also means you could bludgeon someone without feeling it."

Across the room, Elizabeth flinched.

Durn didn't notice. His thoughts were on the cables encircling the Traveler.

He returned to his cot and retrieved his shotgun from where it had been stashed under the bed. His service revolver was probably out in the road in front of the tea shop. He needed it back. And he needed to scavenge for ammunition.

Xavier was still asleep, the other ghosts huddled around him. Durn stroked the top of the little core for a moment, hoping his touch would help the ghost recover, somehow.

"I'm going outside," he told the ghosts as he pulled on his armor. "Don't let him follow me. I'll be back."

"Please come back," one of the ghosts said in a small voice.

Durn didn't want to think about what would happen if he didn't. He scraped dried blood off his breastplate and fumbled at the buckles with one hand.

He was halfway up the steps to the trapdoor when Elizabeth said behind him, "Where are you going?"

He turned, grinning. "Hunting."

"You were half-dead yesterday."

"My ghost healed me. Look, I'm going out. Come with me, if you want."

Elizabeth studied him a long moment. Her lips shifted, as if hiding a smile. "I'll get my coat."

A few minutes later, Elizabeth returned, wearing a heavy coat and carrying an older Vanguard-issue Nightshade pulse rifle.

"That thing still works?" Durn asked.

Elizabeth looked pointedly at the Deadpan Delivery shotgun in his hand. "Yours is gummed up with dried blood. And how're you going to work a shotgun with one hand?"

He looked down at it, where he was cradling the barrel on the back of his right arm. "I'll figure it out."

He carefully opened the trapdoor and peered out. The yard outside was quiet. A Cabal ship roared by in the distance, but otherwise, the area sounded deserted. The sky overhead was gloomy and overcast, and plumes of smoke still rose from multiple places across the City. He crept outside and ducked into the shelter of the tea shop. Elizabeth closed the trapdoor and hurried after him.

She pulled out her ghost and had her scan the area. After a moment, Summer reported, "Hostiles patrolling on the next block, moving east. Stay alert. They may turn this direction at any time."

Durn moved to the front door of the tea shop and peered out. The street was empty of life. The bodies of the dead war beasts littered the asphalt. Somewhere among them lay his hand cannon - and probably his hand, too, if the beast hadn't swallowed it.

He stepped outside and hurried to the dead beasts, hunting among the stinking corpses. He found his revolver several yards away, where it had skidded across the sidewalk and hit the wall of a building. His severed hand still grasped it, now much withered and dead-looking.

"So much for reattaching it," he muttered to Xavier, then remembered his ghost wasn't with him. He nudged the dead hand off the gun, then picked up the revolver and holstered it. It needed a good cleaning, but it might fire a bullet or two. Now, to find ammunition, synths or otherwise.

Elizabeth joined him and glanced at the hand on the sidewalk. "You think we should bury it?"

"Sure," he said, "and we'll give it a send-off of one hand clapping." He opened and closed his left hand rapidly, his fingers making a drumming sound against his palm.

Elizabeth started to laugh, but held it in. She nudged the severed limb to a nearby planter with a tree in it, tossed the hand in, and covered it with earth.

Durn said, "So long, right hand. You had the itchiest trigger finger in the Vanguard."

Elizabeth cracked. She laughed with both hands pressed to her mouth to muffle the sound. "How can you?"

"It's my hand," Durn grinned. "I'll give it whatever eulogy I want. Come on."

He led the way up the street to the corner, where he paused, gripping his shotgun and listening to the tramp of heavy booted feet on the next block.

Elizabeth pressed herself against the wall beside him and seemed to blend with the shadows. For a second, he almost didn't see her.

The aliens shouted orders. Some of the marching troops split off from their cohorts and headed down the cross street toward Durn's position. He peeked around the corner. Four legionnaires, all carrying heavy rifles and marching in step.

If he still had the Light and bullets, he'd have shoulder-charged the first one, broken the neck of the second with a punch, and shotgunned the other two. But he had neither. And he wanted the extra ammo synths each alien carried on its belt.

He drew his hand cannon, steadied it on his wrist, and blew the head off the first alien. As the others spun toward the bark of his gun and their falling companion, he picked off a second. Black oil burst from the neck of the alien's suit.

The other two fired at him, chipping the corner of the building he was hiding behind. As he ducked further into cover, he realized Elizabeth was gone. No, not gone. She had climbed the tree in the planter.

It wasn't a large tree - the trunk was only four inches thick. But Elizabeth had found a perch among the branches, where she aimed down the sights of her pulse rifle, waiting. As the aliens turned the corner, she killed one, and Durn killed the other.

"Loot them, quick," she said. "Their buddies will notice when they don't check in."

Durn raced from alien to alien, tearing synth blocks out of their ammo pouches. Synth was programmable matter derived from glimmer. It could be converted into bullets of any caliber for any number of guns. It took quite a few synths to manufacture shotgun shells in their jackets.

His arms full of synths, Durn bolted back toward the tea shop and the bunker behind it. Elizabeth followed him, covering their escape, her ghost scanning for enemies. As they ducked through the trapdoor, the roar of an approaching patrol ship echoed among the buildings. Durn and Elizabeth crouched on the stairs, gripping their weapons, waiting.

After a few minutes, Cabal soldiers stomped through the tea shop, smashing furniture, looking for the lurking humans. When they finished destroying everything in the shop, they explored the rear yard, kicking around the concealing junk. One alien stood directly on the trapdoor for a long moment, his weight making it creak alarmingly. But the disguise held. The aliens left to comb the buildings on either side.

Elizabeth looked at Durn. "That was too close."

He nodded and let out a long, slow sigh. "We'll have to make sure future encounters happen far from here."

Elizabeth looked up at the trapdoor and hissed a string of curses under her breath. Durn gathered it was because they had wrecked her shop. He silently resolved to help her replace everything, if they ever won back the City.

He descended the rest of the stairs and nodded to the other refugees. "All clear for now." They stared at him, wide-eyed. He was quite a sight, he reflected - a hulking Titan in plate armor, his arms full of brick-like synths, a shotgun slung over his shoulders, one hand missing.

He ducked into the tiny corner room where they had stuck him while nursing him back to health. All the ghosts still sat on the pillow on his bed, clustered around Xavier.

Durn dumped the synths on his bed and pulled off his shotgun. "Any change?"

"You were gone, like, fifteen minutes," a ghost pointed out.

It had seemed like far longer, Durn thought, stripping off his glove and gauntlet with his teeth.

"Could one of you do me a favor and convert these synths?" He rattled off the three types of ammunition he needed.

One of the ghosts left the pillow and played a beam over each synth. Each brick twitched and folded itself into a pile of bullets or shotgun shells. Durn didn't like to watch the synths transform. It always reminded him of wriggling maggots, for some reason, as matter rearranged itself.

He begged oil and rags from Elizabeth, and set about disassembling and cleaning his guns. The service revolver was full of dried blood and saliva from the war beast. The shotgun had blood in the works. Only the grenade launcher was fairly clean. He could only synth two grenades for it, so he'd have to make them count.

As he worked, Elizabeth appeared and leaned against the doorway. "Planning to wage a one-man war against the Red Legion?"

"No," he replied. "If I told you, you'd say I'm crazy."

She arched that eyebrow of hers.

He told her anyway. "I'm going to free the Traveler."

There was dead silence for a moment. Then Elizabeth said, "You're right. That's crazy. But somebody has to try. What's your plan?"

"Hijack a Cabal ship," he said. "Drop on top of the Traveler. Cut through every cable I can reach. Open the cage, let the Light out, so we Guardians can fight back."

Elizabeth watched him cleaning his revolver. "Your ghost can't resurrect you. What if you die?"

He concentrated on polishing the inside of the revolver's barrel for a long moment. Then he looked up. "Then at least I'll have died fighting to save humanity and the Traveler."

Elizabeth held his gaze for a moment, then looked away and folded her arms. He worked on his revolver, and for a while neither of them spoke.

"Were you a hunter?" he asked her quietly.

She nodded.

He nodded, too. "When you climbed the tree, I figured. Hunters think like that."

"I was a good Hunter," she said. "But I wasn't good at Crucible, so much." Her gaze settled on the ghosts on the pillow.

One of the ghosts floated into the air, her shell halves twitching back and forth nervously. "Light and Darkness. Elizabeth."

Durn looked at the ghost, then Elizabeth. "Something I should know?"

Elizabeth said nothing, only stared at the ghost.

"My guardian was Titan Sheltiel," the ghost said to Durn. "Do you remember, a long time ago, when Shel was suspended from the Crucible for poor sportsmanship?"

Durn frowned, remembering. "Didn't that happen three different times? He was a rotten loser."

The ghost gave Elizabeth a nervous look. "She was on his fireteam during championships. They made it to the final round and they lost. Sheltiel thought it was Elizabeth's fault. He killed her. With his hands."

Durn sat up with a jerk to stare at Elizabeth. "He did?"

She nodded in silence.

"Great Traveler above," he breathed. "No wonder you left."

"It was a long time ago," she said, rubbing one arm. "It doesn't matter anymore."

Durn jumped to his feet and she flinched away from the sudden movement. It told him reams more than she would ever say aloud. Now he understood why she kept her distance, always kept her escape lanes open, always watched him with that wary, animal look in her eyes.

Sheltiel had beaten her to death in a rage over losing a Crucible championship.

He bared his teeth at the ghost. "It's a good thing Sheltiel's dead. I'd put a bullet in him, and you, too."

The ghost shrank away from him.

Durn deliberately sat back down and returned to cleaning his guns. Elizabeth slipped away, but returned after a while with two bottles of water. She set one on the floor beside him and retreated to her spot in the doorway again.

Durn seethed. This woman had built an entire bunker and packed it with supplies, all while pretending to be human in the Last City, because of abuse suffered at the hands of a fellow Guardian. She'd probably planned to vanish entirely had the Vanguard come knocking. Right now, he wanted to find Sheltiel's corpse and put a few bullets in it. He'd punch out whoever was in leadership at the time for not standing up for Elizabeth.

Slowly his temper cooled. His movements calmed. He wasn't helping anyone by letting his temper take over. That had been Sheltiel's problem. No, he was better off trying to free the Traveler, as he'd planned. Returning Elizabeth's Light was the best thing he could do for her.

"That upset you," Elizabeth said suddenly, interrupting his thoughts.

Durn nodded.

"Why?"

He glanced up at her. "I knew Sheltiel. I remember that incident. I knew he killed someone, but I thought it was inside the Crucible. You know. Where it's legal."

She gave him a thin-lipped smile. "It was in the street outside the arena."

His temper threatened to claw its way through his brain again. He had to count to ten before he mastered himself. "No one deserves what he did to you. He was wrong. And his punishment was too mild."

"It's why I left," she said.

They gazed at each other a long moment. Finally, Durn said, "You don't have to be afraid of me."

She nodded, and her mouth twisted, as if holding back tears. She looked down at her water bottle for a minute. "You've been very kind. And very brave. I'm working on it."

For some reason, he could hardly bear to look at her. He returned to cleaning the already clean revolver. "We Titans take an oath to protect the Last City when we finish training. 'My life for the Last City,

my deaths for her people,

my Light for the Traveler,

my shield for Earth,

my sword for her enemies.'

"Sheltiel brought shame on our whole order. No wonder they kept it quiet. We'd have exiled him."

He glanced at Elizabeth to check her reaction. She was studying him, arms crossed, like armor over her heart.

"You didn't know?" she said.

Durn shook his head. "Nobody knew. I mean, we knew Shel had been reprimanded and been suspended from the Crucible for six months. But that goes on all the time, Titans, Hunters, and Warlocks. Somebody's neck is always on the line about something. I was supposed to do a year of community service for insubordination, remember. It's embarrassing. Guardians just don't ask."

There was a short silence. Elizabeth seemed to be thinking this over. "I suppose that makes sense. I left because I couldn't stand the thought of being put back on a fireteam with Sheltiel. And also ... I wanted to kill him. Really kill him, and his ghost, too. But that's wrong, so ... I resigned, instead."

Sheltiel's ghost dove back onto the pillow and hid among her siblings.

Before Durn could respond, Elizabeth added, "I forgot about your sentence. Do you think freeing the Traveler would count as community service?"

Durn chuckled. "It certainly benefits the community, doesn't it?"

Elizabeth smiled. "It does. How thick would you say those cables are?"

He indicated a diameter of six inches. "Just a guesstimate at this point. It won't be easy to cut."

"No. Let me see what tools I have." Elizabeth walked off and began checking her tool crates.

Durn reassembled his weapons and loaded them, using his knees as a second hand. He was still angry and ashamed on Elizabeth's behalf. But he would embrace those feelings, use them to fuel his drive for this suicidal mission he'd given himself. If he freed the Light, then dying would be no big deal - Xavier could resurrect him.

He glanced at his ghost. Xavier's eye was open and tracking his movements, but his shell was still splayed awkwardly across the pillow.

"You all right?" Durn asked him.

"Tired," Xavier replied. "I've been listening. Poor Elizabeth."

Durn nodded. He spun the cylinder of the revolver and holstered it. "Do you think you're feeling up to an assault on the Traveler's cage?"

Xavier slowly pulled the segments of his shell into place around himself and floated into the air. "I suppose so. I must have done a good job with the healing, if you're already plotting heroics."

"You're a great healer, Xav." Durn grinned at his friend. "You're welcome to stay here. If I fail my mission, there's no coming back, whether you're there or not."

The ghost gazed at him in silence for a long moment. Then he said softly, "I'd want to be with you."

Xavier didn't want him to die alone, if it came to that. Touched, Durn patted the ghost's shell. "Rest up, then. I'm not leaving right away. Have to figure out a plan."

Elizabeth returned, carrying a cutting torch and a small butane tank. "This should do the job, assuming you can reach the Traveler in the first place. I was looking at it with binoculars. The cables are sending out this energy shield that are deflecting every last bit of Light. I don't think you'll be able to stand in the shield."

Durn rose to his feet. "Mind if I borrow the binoculars?"


	6. Chapter 6: Hijack

The cage around the Traveler was growing wider, blackness spreading from each cable in an ever-widening stain. Only a few narrow white areas were left. Durn studied it for some time, trying to discern what composed the shield and how it worked.

Xavier floated at his shoulder, gazing upward, too. "Cabal tech uses photon enhancers to generate energy shields. Nasty, hot things. Enemy projectiles hit them and incinerate."

"But this one is turning black," Durn pointed out. "I've seen Cabal shields. They ripple orange and yellow, not black."

"Maybe this one is reflecting the Light inward?" Xavier suggested. "I'm guessing, here. That shield isn't something I've seen before. Of course, I've never seen anyone try to cage Light."

"The shield is near the Traveler's surface," Durn said, studying it. "A few feet away, at most. If I wore fire-resistant gear, I could stand in the shield for a few minutes."

"Where do you expect to find that?" Xavier said. "Elizabeth won't have thermal suits in her stash."

Durn thought about it. "I'll have to lift one from the Cabal. Their engineers wear them. I'll have to grab one when we hijack a ship. Speaking of, how goes patrol tracking?"

"Slow," Xavier reported. "I have five ships on radar. They patrol in a grid, quartering the Core district. Their paths cross every ten minutes. They stop to refuel every four hours - I think. I haven't been tracking very long."

"Keep at it," Durn said. "The Cabal aren't known for their smarts. We should be able to predict their movements."

"Right," Xavier said. "Speaking of which, ship coming, take cover."

Durn's ducked into the wrecked tea shop as a patrolling ship slowly roared overhead. A distant voice on a loudspeaker gave the all clear, and the ship moved on.

"I wish I had my fireteam," Durn muttered, making sure the ship was out of sight before stepping outside to study the Traveler again.

"Kari is still here in the City," Xavier said. "She's with some other Guardians in the Crucible arenas. I've been able to ping their ghosts, but they haven't responded to communications. I think they've gone dark to avoid being found."

"That's encouraging," Durn said, breathing a little easier. He wasn't so crushingly alone as he had thought. Not that it did him much good - he couldn't contact them, and he had no desire to hike three miles through a war zone to track them down. Not to mention, he couldn't stand the thought of any more Guardians meeting their final end. He already had four orphaned ghosts he had no idea what to do with.

"What about Elizabeth?" Xavier suggested. "She's a hunter. You said she was a good fighter."

"I can't ask her to back me up," Durn said. "She has all these refugees to look after. And I don't want to get her killed."

"What if she offers?" Xavier said.

Durn shook his head. "She won't. You know what she's been though, Xavier. Sheltiel did a number on her. She's scared of me because I'm a Titan, too. The sooner I'm out of her life, the better off she'll be."

Xavier looked at him inscrutably. Then he returned his gaze to the Traveler. Durn did, too.

After a while, the trapdoor opened and Elizabeth emerged. She walked up and stood beside Durn, gazing up at the Traveler, too. "You think this will work?"

"It'd better," Durn said. "I'm wagering my life on it."

He lowered the binoculars to see Elizabeth gazing at him with a wistful expression. "What?"

"Don't die out there," she said softly. "You're the first Guardian I ever-" She broke off and abruptly turned away.

"Lizzy," he said gently.

When she turned back to him, tears glistened in her eyes.

Durn gazed at those tears, realizing what they meant. Blast this damn war for ruining so many lives, and for taking away any opportunity he might have had to know Elizabeth better.

"I can't promise to come back," he said, resting his hand on her shoulder. "But ... whatever happens ... don't be afraid of being a Guardian."

She bit her lip and nodded, then wiped her eyes with her sleeve. She made no move to shake off his touch.

He gave her shoulder a little squeeze and let go. "Now, my ghost has been collecting data on Cabal patrols. I'm heading for their nearest station - they're using the municipal airport. Xavier can hack the controls of a Thresher. The plan is to fly straight up to the top of the Traveler and jump on from there. I don't think they'll shoot at me - they won't risk breaking the shield. Then I-"

"Durn," Elizabeth interrupted.

He halted and looked at her inquiringly.

"I don't want to know," she said. "I don't want false hope."

That took the wind out of his sails. "Oh," he said, forcing a smile. "Right. So. I'm going to suit up." He handed her the binoculars and opened the trapdoor, motioning for her to enter first. She descended the stairs slowly and heavily, as if already mourning him.

It wasn't all that encouraging.

* * *

The municipal airport had serviced small civilian aircraft before the war. It had several hangers and a lone air traffic control tower. But the civilian planes there had been bombed and reduced to charred wreckage. In their place sat a row of Goliath tanks, powered down and resting on their hover legs. Across the tarmac sat a row of Red Legion Threshers. They'd always reminded Durn of a giant flying nose, for some reason - an oblong ship with two stubby wings. But then, troop transports didn't have to be pretty.

Two hovering Interceptors patrolled the road outside the airport. These were similar to a sparrow, if the sparrow was extra wide, slow as a salted slug, and armed with solar rockets.

Durn surveyed the airport from the safety of an abandoned house across the road. He ran through potential strategies in his head with his ghost.

"All right, how about I steal an Interceptor, crash it through the fence, and wreck it into a Goliath Tank? While they're dealing with that distraction, I hijack a Thresher."

"Durn, you have no Light. You'd die."

Durn watched the Interceptors drive by. "So ... what if I climb the fence back by the hangers, where nobody's watching? Then I sneak around to a Thresher, use the guns to blow up the other Threshers, and take off?"

"The plan was great until the explosions part."

Durn sighed and rubbed his forehead through his helmet. "Right, then, mister paragon of intellect. What's your plan?"

The ghost highlighted a Thresher on his HUD. "That ship just began its preflight sequence. The side ramp is never locked on those, and there's a latch on the outside. Sneak aboard, wait until it's airborne, then hijack it. They won't shoot at you immediately because their own guys cleared it. And jump the fence by the hangers. I like that plan. Go!"

"What, now?"

"Yes! Now!"

Durn had a long jog around the airport on the roads, screening his progress behind the houses. Then he climbed the fence and had a much more tense jog around the airport, dashing from ship to ship as cover.

The target Thresher was warming up its engines when he finally reached it, gasping for breath. He found the side ramp and heaved at the latch. It would have been easy with two hands, but it was almost beyond him with only one.

"Lift, damn you!" he snarled at his left hand. He braced the stump of his right wrist under his left wrist and hauled upward. The latch finally gave way with a loud rasping noise, fortunately masked by the rising screech of the engines. Durn pulled the ramp down, climbed inside, then dragged the ramp shut after him.

The only reason he wasn't shot immediately by the pilot was because the carrier area, which he'd entered, was blocked off from the cockpit by a sliding metal door. The floor and walls were dirty with muddy tracks and finger grease. It smelled like at least one war beast had had an accident.

Flipping on his helmet's atmospheric filter, Durn advanced to the cockpit door, knelt, and waited.

The pilot was a Psion, a slender, telekinetic race the Cabal had assimilated ages ago. It worked the controls and spoke into the radio in a buzzing, nasal drone. After another minute, the ship lifted skyward with a lurch.

"You can fly one of these, right?" Durn thought to Xavier.

"Of course," the ghost replied. "I've carried the files for years, hoping we'd get a chance like this. It's on my bucket list to fly one of every ship we've ever encountered."

Durn smothered a laugh, not that the Psion would have heard it over the engines. "You never told me that."

"Well, I ..." Xavier trailed off suddenly. "Just saying ... we probably don't have much longer to cross items off the list."

Durn sobered. Even his ghost thought they were probably going to die. Well, there was a good chance of it.

In his backpack, Durn carried a thermal suit he had swiped out of a Cabal supply depot on the way to the airport. He pulled it out and put it on. It was about fifty sizes too big, engulfing him and his bulky armor in shiny silver material from head to foot. It had a clear face plate and catches to hold it in place over his head. By the time Durn had the thing on, he felt like he was trying to wear a hot air balloon, minus the hot air.

The Psion had taken the Thresher to cruising altitude by this time and was flying across the City.

"Feel free to make the hijack any time," Xavier said. "Assuming you can move."

"I can move just fine," Durn replied, trying to grip his hand cannon through acres of fabric. "It's just that the suit tries to stay behind when I do."

He waded through the suit and fumbled with the catch on the door. This was awkward with his hand already full of his weapon. He had to tuck the pistol under his arm, unlatch the door, then draw the pistol again. Then he slid the door open, far slower than he had intended.

The Psion turned, noticing the door's movement. Now it stood frozen, staring, as a shapeless, silver monster shambled out of the previously-empty crew compartment.

Durn was unaware of the psychological warfare his fellow guardians had been waging on the Cabal. They had worked hard to convince the aliens that the empty city was inhabited by the spirits of the dead. The Red Legion, already half-afraid of the Traveler to begin with, were all too ready to believe that this was yet another unknown effect of that strange power called the Light.

The Psion had no idea what this silver monster was.

It screamed in terror, backing away toward the cockpit door. As Durn struggled to find his gun's trigger through the fabric, the Psion flung the door open and leaped out into space, flying away on its jet pack.

"Well," Durn said, blinking. "That happened."

Xavier laughed so hard, he could barely stay airborne. He tried to take control of the ship and kept staggering in the air. Durn had to haul the cockpit door shut, reducing the roar of the wind and engines by a fraction.

"Got it," Xavier gasped. "Oh Traveler, that was classic. I have it on video. That Psion's reaction!"

As he spoke, the ghost was swinging the Thresher in a long, gentle turn, angling the nose upward. They were flying even with the Traveler's equator, and would have to gain considerable altitude to reach its northern pole. So far, the other Cabal ships hadn't noticed them.

Durn allowed himself a chuckle at last. He gazed across the City, making note of how much still stood. Lights glowed from various entrenchments. Other ships flew in orderly patrols. When the Light returned, he'd need that information.

As they rounded the Traveler's sphere, the claw ship came into sight, the cables and shield radiating outward from it. Another transport was docking at the central platform as they flew by.

"Looks like someone's trying to board the Traveler," Durn observed. "Let's rain on their parade, shall we?"

"They won't like it when their cage pops open," Xavier agreed. "From here, those cables look thicker than six inches. And I don't think they're cables."

Durn studied them in growing uneasiness. From this closer vantage point, the cables were more like telescoping rods bent into curved sections. Cutting through one might take more power than his little torch could produce.

He did have two grenades in his launcher. But an explosion might damage the Traveler.

"Xavier," Durn said as they spiraled upward, following the curve of the Traveler's side. "How much collateral damage are we willing to do?"

The ghost glanced up from the controls. "To ourselves?"

"To the Traveler."

Xavier glanced out the cockpit window at it. "Durn, you know I think you're an amazing Titan. But I also don't think you're strong enough to damage it, even if you had your Light. The outer shell is made of nutronium and electroweak matter. No weapon we could possibly carry could damage that."

Durn watched the Traveler flow by. They were nearing the northern pole. "The Traveler is weirder than I thought."

"It's made of things that shouldn't exist," Xavier agreed. "I'm impossible. You're impossible. What we're attempting is impossible. And I'm fine with that."

Durn was more concerned about what might happen if he tried to stand on nutronium and electroweak matter. Would it burn his legs off? But no, other people had touched the Traveler and its fractured pieces before. The outer shell was harmless.

But he tried to ignore the pre-combat jitters beginning to creep through his limbs.

* * *

Elizabeth opened the trapdoor and peered around the yard. "All clear?"

"All clear," her ghost replied.

Elizabeth climbed into the yard, closing the trapdoor. She lifted her binoculars and scanned the Traveler. "Do you think Durn's up there, yet?"

"Maybe," Summer replied. It was dusk, and the Traveler's bulk overhead blocked their view of anything happening above it. However, they had a clear view of the claw ship and the cables. Another ship had docked there, tiny against the claw.

"What's going on?" Elizabeth muttered, studying it. "That's not Durn, is it? He wouldn't tackle that part. It's too big."

"Hard to tell," Summer replied. "He was going to steal a Thresher, like that one. But he might still be trying to get one."

Or he might be dead. But neither of them voiced this dismal thought.

Summer turned and gazed at the nearest building. "That's odd. I'm picking up ... something."

"What kind of something?"

The ghost flicked her shell back and forth. "It reads like ghost transmissions, but at extremely low frequency. Like they're whispering."

Elizabeth blinked at her ghost, baffled. "Who is it? Other guardians?"

"Maybe." Summer turned this way and that, listening. "And there's a lot of them. I think ... do you think the Vanguard is moving against the Red Legion?"

A surge of hope and excitement filled Elizabeth's heart. "Is that possible? Even without Light?"

They both returned their gaze to the Traveler. If Durn could cut open the cage - with an army of guardians standing by - the war would be over.

"Transmat me Nightshade," Elizabeth said, hurrying for the roof of her shop. "If I can help in any way, I will."


	7. Chapter 7: Dawn

Miles above, a lone Thresher flew above the Traveler in circles. A Cabal flight controller hailed it in increasing anger, but the ship made no reply.

"They're onto us," Xavier remarked, turning the radio off.

"Doesn't matter," Durn said, pulling up the slack in the thermal suit. "Take us down. I don't want to land and slide off."

"I don't think it'll be a problem," Xavier said. "Here at the top, the sphere is fairly flat. You won't have to worry about the slope as long as you stay in one place."

The ship swooped low and hovered ten feet from the Traveler's surface. The energy shield gleamed in diamond-shapes across it, black as solar collectors. Beneath it, the topmost cable stretched across the Traveler. Durn's target.

"Here goes," he said, opening the cockpit door. He hesitated long enough to draw a breath and wondered if he was about to die horribly against the shield. Then he jumped.

The huge thermal suit flapped around him as he dropped. He landed with a thud, his feet going straight through the shield to the Traveler's rock-hard surface beneath. As expected, where his legs passed through the shield, they immediately began to grow hot. The thermal suit reflected it, keeping the shield from burning him to a crisp at once. He probably had fifteen minutes before the suit failed.

He would have to work fast. Durn hauled the cutting torch out of his backpack and fumbled with the controls through the thermal suit. He waded through suit and shield to the cable.

The cable was a metal pipe with energy emitters every few inches. These swirled with the energy necessary to generate the shield. Durn's picked a spot and ignited the torch.

The outer metal of the pipe cut away quite satisfactorily. But inside it was a twisted cable of live wires. As he cut into them, they flashed and sparked, sending up a column of smoke. The shield rippled. But it would take a while to cut through them all, because the cable was as thick as a man's leg.

"They're going to notice this," Xavier muttered. He sent the Thresher back to the airbase - with orders to kamikaze into the Goliath tanks - and phased himself into Durn's suit.

"Keep me informed," Durn replied.

As he worked, he was aware of the growing burn around his calves where the shield was eating into the thermal suit. The silver was developing a discolored mark there. He hitched up the suit to keep it from being compromised in that spot and went on cutting wires.

The soles of his boots stood directly on the Traveler. It clinked like tile. But more than that, Durn sensed the Light he had been lacking for so long. The Traveler roiled with it, seething and churning within the shield. The energy crept into him, conveyed through his blood and bones.

"Is this always what the Traveler feels like?" he panted.

Xavier felt it, too. He drank in the Light, starved for it, even the tiny amount conducted through Durn's feet.

"It feels ... different," the ghost said. "Almost ... awake. Durn, something's happening."

"Maybe it doesn't like the cage," Durn said, squinting at the cutting torch. "Man, I should have brought eye protection. I'm going blind."

His ghost's healing warmth touched his eyes, reducing the growing dead spot where he had been watching the torch. "Idiot," Xavier muttered affectionately. "The Traveler might be waking up at last. And it might notice us. We might get our Light back!"

"We can hope," Durn agreed. "And then-"

His voice was drowned out in the sudden roar of engines. Another Thresher swept over and hovered. The side doors burst open, and five Cabal legionnaires leaped onto the Traveler, too. They wore silver suits like Durn's, but theirs fit their heavy bodies. Instead of guns, they wore gauntlets with red-hot swords protruding from them.

"Oh damn," Durn and Xavier muttered in unison.

The aliens charged, their heavy footfalls making the shield ripple like water. Durn fumbled for his shotgun. He blasted one alien in the midsection, ducked a swing from another, and shot another in the helmet. One of the legionnaires grabbed his cutting torch and threw it. It sailed through the air, across the Traveler's curve, and fell into the shield. The butane tank exploded with a sharp bang.

As Durn watched this in mounting anger, a burning blade met the barrel of his shotgun and sheared it off.

Durn swore and threw it aside. He'd killed two of his five enemies. They'd ruined his plan to free the Traveler. He recklessly punched the nearest alien. Pain shot through his fist, but the alien's neck snapped.

He turned to face the last two aliens and took a fist to the gut that sent him flying. He hit the Traveler's hard surface and rolled down the treacherously gentle slope.

"Guardian! No!" Xavier cried. "I can't catch you!"

The shield burned Durn from all angles as he rolled, struggling to catch himself with only one hand. The suit tangled around his limbs. He dug in with his fingernails and toes, spreading his limbs, trying to slow as much as possible. His headlong roll slowed and halted, almost too far down the slope to save himself. Below was a long, long fall through empty space, onto buildings and concrete.

Sweating, Durn began to crawl back up the Traveler, one limb at a time. The thermal suit kept the shield from killing him outright, but it had begun to blacken and smoke. The shield's unforgiving heat blazed into the armor beneath the suit.

The two Cabal couldn't follow him down, so they waited for him at the top of the slope, swords ready.

The Traveler's Light blazed into Durn everywhere he touched it - hand, knees, feet. It felt wild and unruly, like pressure building up behind a cork in a bottle. It fizzed inside Durn, teasing him with the taste of his supercharge. He could almost scrape together enough energy to summon a golden hammer. And if he did-

"Xavier, how many grenades do I have for Wicked Sister?"

"Your launcher? We synthed two."

"Great." Durn kept crawling, away from that deadly, indefinite edge. He had to stop and pull the suit up around him every few feet, or his knees wound up inside the chest cavity. He was beginning to hate that suit with a seething, personal hatred.

"Something's happening," Xavier muttered. "Down below. A lot of explosions and light flashing. Do you think other Guardians are attacking the cage?"

"I hope so," Durn grunted, still climbing. It'd be wonderful if all the guardians converged on the cage at once. But the Traveler's Light felt so disturbed - it was probably some new vile experiment of the Cabal's to weaponize the Traveler.

When he was far enough up that he wouldn't slide down the slope, but the aliens couldn't quite reach him, Durn sat up on his knees. The grenade launcher appeared in his arms. He braced it against his shoulder.

The aliens backed away hurriedly. That was what Durn wanted. He waited until they were standing near the cable, then fired.

The grenade sailed through the air, hit the cable, and exploded. The two legionnaires cartwheeled in opposite directions and landed on the shield. One lay dead, but the other slipped down the Traveler and out of sight. Durn averted his eyes.

The grenade had damaged the cable inside the tube. Smoke rose in a steady column from the broken spot. The shield around it flickered and turned a pale orange, weakening.

Durn aimed his final grenade at the cable. But a change in the light made him look up. Some huge thing was billowing into the sky beyond the Traveler's edge - a giant, glowing, winged being. It unfolded and spread itself into a Cabal commander, but made entirely of shifting, cascading Light.

Xavier made a sound - a pained, horrified sound, as if he'd taken a fist to the stomach he didn't have. Durn made a similar noise, his arms going slack. The alien had taken the Light and turned itself into some kind of god. How could Durn fight that? He had one grenade, a broken shotgun, and a service revolver. Enough stolen Light had seeped into him to almost grant him a single supercharge. None of it was enough. If that alien turned and spotted the lone Guardian standing atop the Traveler, Durn had no way of defending himself. The other guardians were no match for that thing. They were doomed. They'd lost.

"What do we do?" he whispered.

"Can we fight?" Xavier whispered back.

The alien was proclaiming its triumph, its voice booming across the City. It mocked the Traveler.

And then-

The Traveler shifted under Durn's feet. He looked down in time to see the crust crack, blue Light streaming out. The weakened place in the cable suddenly snapped. The shield rippled, portions weakening, not quite going dead.

Xavier gasped. "Durn! The Traveler's reacting! We need to get off it!"

"How?"

"You'll have to jump!" The ghost laughed wildly. "Don't worry! The Light's coming back!"

Durn ran down the slope. The Traveler shuddered again, a giant awakening from its sleep. Durn stumbled and fell headlong. He smacked the Traveler's surface once, then he was falling, down the face of the sphere, toward the City.

The Traveler erupted with Light.

In midair, Durn's entire body was bathed Light beyond the power of the sun. His body dispersed into atoms. His consciousness, untethered from a body, was captured and held by his ghost.

For a moment Durn and Xavier floated in nowhere, watching the shockwave of Light flood the City, the globe, the solar system, finding and empowering every guardian and lightbearer who had wandered in the dark. The alien who had stolen the Light was gone. The Cabal in the City were knocked flat, stunned and burned.

As the burst of Light faded, Xavier materialized and dove for the ground, still bearing his Guardian's spark. "Hold on, Durn," he said. "I'll rebuild your body in a second. With both hands, this time."

Durn couldn't figure out how to speak without a mouth, but he laughed. He was still laughing when Xavier rebuilt him from quanta and poured him back into his body.

Durn stood there, laughing, raising both hands to the Traveler. Sparkles of Light fell through the air like snowflakes in the aftermath of the great pulse. The Traveler's outer shell had cracked, chunks the size of city blocks now sheared away and floating free, Light still pouring from inside.

"It saved us!" Durn kept saying. "The Traveler actually did something for once! It saved us!"

Xavier bounced around him, cheering and laughing, trying to catch the falling sparkles. "It worked! Sort of! We're not dead! Well, you died, but it was all right!"

Durn held up a hand - his new right hand - for a high five. Xavier bumped himself into Durn's palm.

Suddenly the ghost whirled around, searching. "Summer just sent out a general call for help. Elizabeth's in trouble!"

"Guide me back," Durn said, and broke into a Light-powered run.

* * *

Elizabeth had camped on the roof of her tea shop with her rifle, listening to the low-frequency radio chatter of other Guardians. They whispered about troop movements, ambushes, locations on the west side of the City.

Then they grew louder. Cabal ships changed course overhead, roaring west. Gunshots echoed.

Four Interceptors roared down the street like huge armored motorcycles. Elizabeth let them pass, then shot the two rearmost drivers. They slumped in their seats, the Interceptors swerving off course and crashing into buildings. The other two braked and circled back, hunting.

One alien spotted her on the roof and pointed. She shot him between his ugly, tiny eyes. The last alien spun his craft about and roared away, pressing a hand to his earpiece as he reported to his superiors.

"That's torn it," Summer muttered. "We'd better get away from here before they firebomb the whole block."

Elizabeth slipped down the stairs and out the tea shop door. She dashed down the street, dragged a dead alien off an Interceptor, then climbed into the driver's seat. It had been years since she had driven one of these. This one was newer and more streamlined than the old one she had used on Mars. She worked the controls and rocketed up the street.

"What's the plan?" Summer asked in her head.

"Help the other Guardians, if I can," Elizabeth thought. "If I can't get there, then I'll make noise and distract the Cabal."

"Look at you," Summer sighed proudly. "My Lightbearer, acting like a Guardian again. Saving people. Killing aliens."

"Don't get used to it," Elizabeth replied. "If this attempt to free the Traveler fails, then we're all as good as dead. If not actually dead."

She rounded a corner and plowed into a squadron of Cabal Legionnaires. They were led by a Centurion, an exceptionally large alien, seven feet tall and nearly as wide, with golden armor and a rack of rocket launchers on his back.

The squadron was firing down the street at a group of humans on sparrows - Elizabeth couldn't tell if they were Guardians or not. She had no time to look closer, because she drove the Interceptor right over two Legionnaires with a lurch that nearly threw her from the seat. As the others turned on her with shouts of rage, she thumbed the triggers on the solar rockets. They punched through shields and armor, spattering black alien blood across the pavement. But other Cabal ran at her from the sides, swinging their red-hot blades, and slashed at her. One blade bit deeply into her right forearm, while another seared down the side of her face. Elizabeth jerked the Interceptor sideways, trying to ram the aliens, but there were too many. Their huge, hard hands closed on her arms and hauled her out of the Interceptor, holding her up in the air. They plucked away her rifle, their strength massively outclassing her puny human muscles.

The Centurion barked an order. The Legionnaires turned and made her face him, still holding her a foot off the ground.

Beneath his helmet, the alien's triangular mouth widened in a grisly smile, baring pointed teeth. "Look at this," he said in accented English. "A Guardian with no Light."

"Let me go!" Elizabeth shouted, writhing against the hands gripping her. "I'll show you who's Lightless!"

"Really," said the Centurion. "Our commander, Dominus Ghaul, is at this moment claiming your precious machine for the Red Legion. He will bathe us all in Light. And you, human, will die in Darkness." He pointed upward, at the ship docked at the claw holding the Traveler. Elizabeth looked.

Light flashed and burned up there like lightning on a cloudy day. From this angle, she couldn't tell what was happening, but it looked more like a Crucible fight than an alien claiming the Light. Maybe the one Guardian with Light was trying to stop Ghaul.

"Well, so what?" Elizabeth snapped, although her insides were crawling with terror. "At least one Guardian has regained the Light. Probably more. And your plans are about to go horribly wrong."

"Are they?" said the Centurion. He strode forward two steps and knocked her out of the grip of the aliens holding her.

Her arm broke under the impact. She rolled across the pavement and scrambled to her feet, gasping in pain, favoring her arm. Instinctively she reached for her Light, but found nothing.

"You have such fighting spirit," the Centurion remarked, pacing toward her. "Such a small species. So easily crushed. And you are a female, at that. Yet you face me for the sake of your dead god."

He was mocking her. The way Sheltiel had mocked her as she had tried to defend herself. She tried to leap forward and land a blow on that snarling, leathery face, but the alien swatted her out of the air, almost lazily. She hit the pavement with a cry she couldn't stifle. The legionnaires laughed.

"He's going to kill you," Summer whimpered. "Run away, Liz! Just run away!"

Elizabeth peered around for an escape, but she was surrounded by watching aliens, all of them expecting her to run. "I can't. They've got me penned. If I can just hold out-"

The Centurion was striding toward her again, not even bothering to use his weapons. "Your pathetic friends are attempting to fight, but we have them trapped in kill boxes. You cannot defeat the Red Legion. Your blood will be shed in vain, and none will live to sing of your deeds afterward."

He let her swing at him, blocking each blow with one hand - the way the Titan had done as her blows glanced off his armor. Then the alien doubled his fist and punched her in the face.

That much mass hitting her all at once was like meeting a speeding truck with her head. Her neck and skull broke. Light and darkness exploded inside her head. Bells rang in her ears. All sensation below her neck vanished. She flew backward, into the wall of waiting legionnaires, who let her slide to the ground. She lay there, still alive, but not for much longer. Her breath came in tiny, fluttering gasps.

"Liz," Summer cried. "Oh Liz, no! Please!"

The Centurion's booted feet strode into Elizabeth's range of vision. Or was it an alien? It could also be Sheltiel, pacing toward her, snarling at her to get up, get up and face him like a Guardian.

"Where is the little companion soul?" growled the Centurion. "It must die, too. The vermin will try to save their partners, Light or not." He bent over Elizabeth, prodding her numb body with a huge finger. His foul breath fanned her face.

Suddenly, brilliant Light filled the sky. The Legionnaires pointed and exclaimed. The Centurion rose to his feet and gazed upward.

Elizabeth lay on her back with a perfect view of the being as it ascended. A Cabal with wings, flowing with molten Light. His voice boomed across the City. "Behold! I have become a god!"

But behind him, the cage holding the Traveler was cracking, blue Light shining through the black coating.

"Durn," Elizabeth thought. "He did it!" She gasped in another breath, clinging to life. One more breath. Then another. An awful splinter seemed wedged through her neck, blocking off her breath, her heartbeat.

"Hold on, girl," Summer exclaimed. "Hold on one more minute!"

The Traveler exploded.

Or that was how it seemed to Elizabeth, lying there staring up at it. The world went white. Hot Light blasted her. The aliens screamed and cowered, covering their eyes, their outlines wiped away by the overwhelming power. Her body was blasted, then bathed, then caressed, in Light - healing Light - empowering Light.

Summer screamed, first in terror, then in delight. She appeared, a barely visible glint amid the light, and pulsed it into Elizabeth's body, mending the broken bones and injured muscles.

She was only halfway healed when the Centurion seized the ghost. Half-blinded, the alien stood there with the ghost peeking through his thick fingers, and turned his hateful gaze on Elizabeth.

"Phase!" Elizabeth thought frantically, trying to climb to her feet. Her body felt weak and loose, and pain still wracked her head and arm, but the paralysis was gone.

Summer phased, badly, half her shell left behind in the alien's grip. He felt her move and crushed the remaining bits of shell, letting them clink to the pavement. Then he lifted his rifle and shot Elizabeth through the stomach.

Fresh pain exploded through her. She groped for her Light even as she toppled to the ground, reaching for her old Golden Gun. But the Light eluded her grasp, flickering and burning out. It felt different, somehow, but she didn't have time to study it. She was about to die another horribly violent death and she just wanted it to be over.

The Centurion stamped forward, obviously intending to grind the life out of her under his boots. But a glowing purple shield flashed out of nowhere, hit the alien's head, bounced off, and struck a nearby legionnaire.

Both aliens staggered, stunned. Elizabeth didn't understand what had happened. Had that been Void Light? She turned her head to see a Titan charging down the street toward them, his Void shield returning to his hand. She had never seen a supercharge like that before.

Elizabeth had also never been happier to see a Guardian than at that moment.

The aliens stampeded forward to meet him, kicking her body out of their way, their boots grazing her as they rushed by. Blood soaked her clothes. Elizabeth lay there and tried to die, but her body stubbornly clung to life.

"Summer," she thought. "Help."

"They'll kill me!" her ghost replied. "Wait a minute!"

The void shield flashed again and again, the Titan fighting with his whole body - punching, kicking, striking with his shoulders and shield. He slid through the ranks of aliens to Elizabeth and threw down a Ward of Dawn, a bubble shield appearing over them like a tent.

"Elizabeth!" Durn exclaimed, gazing down at her in shock. "Why doesn't your ghost heal you?"

"Too much fighting," Elizabeth murmured.

Durn focused on the aliens. "Not for long." He charged out of the bubble, laying into the remaining Cabal like a one-man battering ram.

Last to fall was the Centurion, who unloaded his rocket launcher into Durn's position, only to be foiled by the shield. Durn hurled the shield and cut off the Centurion's head with one final blow. The alien collapsed with a thud that shook the ground.

Elizabeth lay there, feeling her life ebbing, suffering, yet not dead. When Durn returned, she gazed up at him in gladness. His grayish skin was flushed with exercise, and his orange eyes glowed brightly.

"Tell that ghost to get out here and do her job," Durn said.

Summer appeared at once and poured healing Light into Elizabeth's wounds. The pain diminished, and the hole in her stomach closed. Elizabeth focused on her ghost - half her pretty teacup shell was missing, her core scratched. The little blue eye fixed on her. "I'm sorry," Summer said. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"

"No, I'm sorry," Elizabeth replied, reaching up to touch the little core in its field of Light. "I almost lost you."

Summer closed her eye and leaned into the caress. "Just when the Light dawned, too. It would have been terrible."

Summer pulled the remains of her core back together and vanished, her job done. Elizabeth sat up, touching her blood soaked blouse. The wound was completely gone. The pain in her head and arm had vanished. What was more, her Light was back - filling her being with warmth, and life, and delight, and happiness.

"Elizabeth," Durn said softly. He knelt beside her, a tender expression on his face. "Can you get up? Are you all right?"

She shakily sat up, then climbed to her feet. "I ... I think so. Are you all right? I thought you were dead."

"I almost was." He glanced up at the Traveler. "But it fought back. It fought for us." He turned to her and opened his arms. "Might I?"

Elizabeth hesitated a moment. But this was Durn, the man who had just rescued her, who had been so kind to her, even while injured. Almost she thought he had saved her from Sheltiel - but no, that had been a different time. She drew a quick breath and embraced him. His arms encircled her, gently, protectively. He pressed his cheek against her hair, and she realized he was shaking.

"What's wrong?" she whispered.

"Nothing," he whispered back. "I almost watched you die, and even my Light wasn't enough."

She thought she wouldn't like being held, but she didn't mind Durn. In fact, she could have stood there, with her arms around him, for hours. For the first time in years, she had found somewhere that felt safe.

But he stirred and released her. "Let's get you back to the bunker. We're fighting to retake the City and I need to help."

Elizabeth almost argued that she wanted to help, too. But she had no armor, her Light felt strange and new, and her pulse rifle had been damaged when the aliens stomped on it. She retrieved it and set out with Durn, walking back up the block toward the tea shop.

"Your hand is back," she said, touching it as they walked.

Durn opened and closed it. "Yeah, feels great to have it again! Good thing, too, because I immediately had to lend you a hand."

Elizabeth snorted with laughter. "Those jokes."

"I'll never not make them," Durn said. "Then I'll lend the Vanguard a hand. We'll drive the Cabal out with their tails between their legs. Did you see their leader turn into some god thing?"

They discussed this as they walked, speculating about what had happened, pointing at the new cracks and holes in the Traveler's shell. When they reached the tea shop, they found Grace standing just inside the broken door, gazing up at the Traveler.

"Mom!" she exclaimed. "What happened? We thought a bomb had gone off!"

"The Traveler sent out a burst of Light," Elizabeth replied. "It destroyed the cage." She turned to Durn. "Or was that your doing?"

He shrugged. "I broke one cable, so maybe that gave it the opening it needed. Or maybe it could have freed itself without me."

Grace beamed and clapped her hands. "This is great! We can win the war, now! Come tell the others, they're very anxious."

Elizabeth stepped toward the tea shop, but hesitated and extended a hand to Durn. "Please come back."

He clasped her hand with his new one. "I will. Titan's word."

Then he was gone, running to the other crashed Interceptor. Elizabeth went to the bunker and explained what had happened, to much cheering.

Everyone crowded onto the steps to lift the trapdoor and see the Traveler freed. They exclaimed in dismay to see huge chunks of it floating loose, looking as if they might crash down on the City at any moment. But the pieces floated, supported by the Traveler's mysterious power.

Everyone wanted to leave, but Elizabeth called above their chatter, "The City's not safe yet, everyone! Give the Guardians time to repel the Red Legion. We'll drive them out, but it takes time. Meanwhile, let's celebrate!"

Elizabeth opened a box containing cookies and sugary snacks for the children. Another contained several bottles of good wine. The bunker became a very cheerful place very quickly. People talked, laughed, and listened to the radio, where the Vanguard was reporting on battle progress.

As the invading Guardians attacked the Cabal from the west, the other set of Guardians hiding in the Core District Crucible arenas came out fighting. The two Guardian squads punched through the Cabal, targeting Centurions and any other leaders, drawing on the Light over and over.

Sunsingers, who had lamented the wounds that had claimed their friends, found their Light manifesting as great, fiery swords and pools of healing Light. Titans, who had mourned their inability to protect the City, now called to hand shields that were both a weapon and a defense. Hunters, who had berated themselves for not being fast enough, called to hand a staff blazing with lightning that enabled them to run like a whirlwind.

The Red Legion, terrified and demoralized at the loss of their leader and the Traveler's attack, fled to their ships. By nightfall, the Guardians had swept the City clean of enemies.

Commander Zavala addressed the survivors and evacuees over the radio. "People of the Last City. The Traveler has awakened, and we Guardians have returned. I cannot express my grief over our failure to protect you all. Lives were lost because of us and our failed Light. But we have emerged from the night to a new dawn. We will rebuild the City, and it will be better than before. Our hope is in the Light, and even in deepest Darkness, our hope cannot be quenched. Take courage, people of the City. Return and rebuild. We Guardians will work beside you."

* * *

It was a month later.

Elizabeth spread a tablecloth over the last table in the tea shop, hiding the repairs made to the damaged legs. The shop was back in business, despite the continued lack of electricity and fuel shortage following the war. Elizabeth had covered the roof of her shop with solar collectors, which generated enough power to heat her tea boilers. Her bunker contained enough stockpiled tea to run her shop for a year - and her shop was the only one selling hot drinks. People flocked to the shop. Elizabeth had hired two more girls to serve tea - newly arrived refugees who were thankful for the jobs.

The orphaned ghosts who Durn had rescued had hung around the shop to help out, too. They ran the register and managed glimmer transfers, and turned out to be quite adept at transmatting tea leaves from storage into the strainers. Elizabeth had grown fond of them all.

As the shop and tables filled, Elizabeth caught sight of a familiar burly figure on the sidewalk outside, gazing at her shop with his ghost at his shoulder.

"Watch the register for me," she told Grace, and slipped outside.

"Durn!" she exclaimed, hurrying to him and taking his hands.

He smiled. He wore plain clothes, obviously trying to blend in - except for Xavier.

"How's business?" he asked, hugging her.

"Booming," Elizabeth replied, leaning into his embrace. After a moment, they separated to study each other's faces. "The repairs you made have been stellar," Elizabeth added. "Nobody has noticed the tables and chairs were patched back together."

He grinned sheepishly. "I may be a Guardian, but I know my way around power tools. I've been helping relocate command out of Tower North. It's structurally unsound, you know."

Elizabeth glanced toward the Tower's hammerhead shape, still blasted and blackened from multiple direct hits from missiles. The support cables connecting it to the ground seemed more stretched than usual, as if the building's weight strained against them.

"Any word on your court martial?" she asked.

He nodded. "I finally had a chance to speak to Zavala last night. He's swamped, you know, looking after a million things at once. The Consensus is still scattered and trying to reorganize. Anyway, I approached his little makeshift office there on the wall and asked him about it. He sort of blinked at me and had to ask for my name. Then he had to ask what I'd done. I guess fighting a war and losing the Light had completely driven out little matters of insubordination."

"Seriously?" Elizabeth asked. They walked slowly down the street, hand in hand. Her ghost appeared and played hide and seek with Durn's ghost, circling their Guardians and popping in and out of phase.

"So we got to talking," Durn went on. "We talked about losing the Light and all. I told him about trying to free the Traveler one-handed. He'd known there had been a Guardian up there, but he hadn't known who it had been. Afterward, he sat there for a long time without speaking, just watching the junk float around the Traveler.

"Finally, he said, 'Landsdown, your actions in the War have paid your debt to the Vanguard. You've gone above and beyond in your service to the City, which is the calling of a true Titan. I will wipe your black mark from the record. This is a new dawn, and we must face what comes next as a united front, or divided, we fall.'"

Elizabeth considered this. "So you're cleared."

"I'm cleared," Durn agreed.

Xavier flashed into view. "And I don't have to be shut in a box for a year!"

Durn grinned and patted his shell. "You're stuck with me, little light."

Durn turned to Elizabeth. "Once we get it fixed up, come see the new Tower with me. It's not the same, but it'll be really nice."

"Maybe," Elizabeth said. "I'm not coming back to the Vanguard. Look at my shop, Durn. Winter is coming, and I'm the only place with hot tea. My shop is more than a business. It's giving people hope."

They stopped and faced each other. Durn brushed a lock of hair away from her face with a tender expression. "Giving out hope ... the way a Guardian should."

She didn't know what to say, so she smiled.

"Look," Durn said, "I know things won't be easy. But I'd like to ask you to go steady with me. We only date each other. Isn't that the term for it? Going steady?"

Elizabeth laughed. "It's old, but it works. You're asking me to be your girlfriend?"

He nodded. "I'd like to get to know you when our lives aren't hanging in the balance. I'm going to be working City support for the foreseeable future, so I'll be around a lot."

"All right," Elizabeth replied. "As of right now, we're going steady."

Hand in hand, they continued their walk, slowly circling the block.

"I was thinking," Elizabeth went on. "The shop was doing well before the war, and I don't think business will drop off any time soon. I might have to open other shops. Maybe a chain."

"That'd be great," Durn said.

She gave him a sideways look. "What if I opened one in the Tower?"

His grin was bright and sudden. "A Tower tea shop? I think Guardians would go crazy for it. There's nowhere to get tea right now except the mess hall, and theirs isn't exactly fancy."

"I'll think about it," Elizabeth said, trying to hide a smile. "In the meantime." She stopped and faced him again. "Maybe we should start our dating with a kiss?"

Durn flushed. "Uh. Right." He glanced at his ghost, who nodded toward Elizabeth. She raised her lips to his, and he kissed her, carefully, awkwardly, unsure of what he was doing. She kissed him back, awkward, but eager.

"I've never kissed anyone before," he admitted afterward.

"Me neither," Elizabeth replied. "Lots of hugs, things like that. I've never been ... interested before."

"When I was a new Guardian," Durn said, "there was this Hunter girl. I was crazy about her. And ... she was eaten by an Ahamkara. Her ghost, too."

"I'm sorry," Elizabeth said.

Durn shrugged. "It made me afraid. Well, that and ..." He gestured to his gray-skinned face. "Human women call me half-blood trash. And Awoken women ... Well, I shouldn't repeat it in front of you."

Elizabeth bristled. "That's cruel. You can't help your race."

He smiled a little. "I know. And they know. You're the first one to bother to look past my color."

"All I want to know," Elizabeth said, "is if you have psychic powers like the Awoken are supposed to have."

Durn laughed. "No, I'm afraid not. Only rugged good looks. And my eyes glow in the dark."

"I can deal with that," Elizabeth replied. "Coming in for a cup of tea?"

"I'd love one," Durn replied.

* * *

The end


End file.
